Through the Dead of Night
by FewAndFarBetween
Summary: When Booth receives orders that will force him back into a world of long-buried memories and old nightmares, he will discover that this time around, his honor and duty now belong to the woman he can't let go of.
1. Outward Bound

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

He doesn't remember ever being this agitated on a plane before. Or maybe he's never been this agitated. He isn't sure. All he knows is that he isn't where he wants to be.

_Nobody wants to go to war_, he reminds to himself. But there's more to it than that and he knows it. He's afraid of the regret that will surely grip him if he allows himself to dwell on things that can't be helped. Adjusting the shoulder straps of his parachute, he feels a tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with the harness that hugs his ribs and hips securely.

Booth has been here before. He knows what that freefall feels like as the solid floor of the plane's large cargo hold disappears from under his feet and he plummets into the still-dark desert air. He knows what to expect when that moment comes. Part of him is even looking forward to it, that moment that, when it finally comes, will block out everything and allow him to plunging head first into the mission. That is what he needs if he is going to survive this again.

_Get in. Get out. Go home._ That is his mantra, and he doesn't want to be distracted from it. It is too important that he make it come true. He will never forgive himself if he fails those three simple commands. Those promises that he made to those that he was forced to leave behind.

He is tapping his feet impatiently, both heavily booted heels connecting solidly on the metal floor that vibrates beneath him. He feels a pleasing sting of gratification with each clop of boot on metal. The physical manifestation of his frustration at least gives him a small outlet, even though his gut is dying to slam his knuckles against the humming walls until he hears the crunch of bones being forced beyond their limit.

_Bones have no limit_. He smiles at his thought. He can almost hear her long-winded sigh and the confident, almost-but-never-quite-patronizing explanation of everything incorrect about his statement.

The soldiers on either side of him don't comment on his tapping, just as he politely ignores their own slight distress signals. Within moments after take-off he'd sized them up, along with the eight other stoic, resound faces. He knows them all well enough to relax some of the tension in his shoulders. The camaraderie is there, backs will be watched, orders will be followed, cover-fire will be offered. But now, in the quiet before the storm, it is the time for individual reflection as each man prepares himself as best he can.

Booth isn't afraid to die. He believes whole-heartedly in an afterlife, and although he still isn't convinced his soul deserves the reward of heaven, he likes to think that he has done everything he can, that his efforts might have been enough. He has always tried. He isn't afraid to die.

But he is afraid of what he could be leaving behind. To never see his son grow into the man Booth knows will make him proud. To never again experience that sweet tart flavor of a perfectly baked apple pie. To never pull another breath of crisp, burning winter air into his lungs after a long morning run. These are all things that he will miss when he is gone, if he can't make it back.

_Bones._

It's a painful thought that bites at his stomach, filling him with a regret that wasn't there the last time he found himself steaming into combat. It's the regret of never-taken opportunities.

He's not sure why he's being such a defeatist. He's been to war before and survived to return to the life he left behind. Although when he takes the time to think about it, which isn't often because it stirs memories he'd rather leave buried in the sand, he realizes that it was actually his life that left _him_ behind, not the other way around. The world continued to spin… he just returned to find that he had spun in a different direction.

Never mind the duty to his country… he doesn't want to be there on that plane. He'll do it, of course, like a good soldier he'll go marching into battle hoping that he's really fighting for the reasons he's being told because he needs to know that the lives he is going to take are worth the sacrifice to his soul.

That his own life is worth the potential sacrifice of his failed dreams and hopes.

It wasn't this bad the last time, that much he knows for sure. Not that he'd been relaxed about the prospect of combat at the tender of a twenty-four, but it had been a different sort of agitation. He distinctly remembers just wishing be anywhere else as that unavoidable, instinctual voice kicked in, warning his primitive senses that death was of imminent concern. He really hadn't cared where that "anywhere else" was, just as long as it was remotely familiar.

Just as long as it wasn't the middle of the damned desert.

The animal instinct in him growled that he shouldn't be there, that survival was all that mattered and that pride was for the foolish and the dead. But Booth was far too human to be garnered by his primitive side. Nobility and pride won out, as it always did with him, and he would sacrifice himself for his humanity.

But that doesn't stop him from wishing, from wanting.

Now, even as he sits on the bench in the large cargo hold, the canvas straps digging into the underside of his thighs from the weight of his gear and the feral roar of the four blurred propellers tearing through the twilight, he has a distinct picture of the one place he wants to be. Just anywhere, just somewhere to get away from where he currently is just isn't good enough this time around. If he isn't there, then he might as well be here on this plane because anywhere else would feel just as wrong, just as empty. This time, he only wants to be home.

But home isn't his apartment, or his childhood house, or his office back at the FBI. Now when he thinks of home, he thinks of cold metal slabs and platforms bustling with skittering squints and lab equipment with names he can't even pronounce, let alone spell. Home is guy-hugs and "their" table at The Diner. Home is playful bickering and stares that last a little too long and faces that come just a little too close.

She is home. He can feel it in his bones.


	2. How to Tell

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

Miserable after only twenty-three hours on the ground is not a good way to start a mission that could last god-only-knows how long. It is hot, the kind of unbearable heat where one can swear they can hear their skin sizzling like a basted turkey blackening under convection waves. Shifting his body uncomfortably on his cot, Booth thinks he must be smelling like a Thanksgiving dinner by now.

_Original or extra crispy_?

Booth chuckles to himself, less at his own wit and more at his imagining of Bones's cursory "I don't know what that means," that endearing request of a genius for help understanding a colloquialism that any child would understand. God he misses that. He misses teaching her how to play to his strengths while he struggles to keep up with her not-so-subtle guidance in academia. He's smart but he knows he'll never catch up with her. Only about 0.2% of the population even stands a chance. But he's always learning, always paying attention, even when he lets her think that he is brushing her lessons off.

He shifts on his cot again. If only he had another layer of skin he could peel off then he might get some relief. As it is, he's down to only his own skin, and with nothing left to take off, he's getting more and more frustrated with the heat.

He imagines that Bones would find it shocking that the "prudish Catholic" Booth had no problem with nudity here amongst his soldiers. In this heat, when gear wasn't required, the men cared very little for modesty while in private quarters. Maybe if there were any women amongst them more care would have been taken. Booth groaned as he wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of a sticky hand. Then again… this heat was making him care very little about anything at the moment.

He is trying his damndest to fall asleep. He can't really remember the last time he was able to. The few minutes he can recall here and there felt more like a hazy slip into a short hallucination than actual, restful, rejuvenating sleep. And he needs to sleep. It is crucial that his mind is sharp and his reflexes trustworthy. Booth knows that is the only way that he will be able to keep his promise.

Booth groans again, feeling the vibrations rumble deep in his chest. Flopping onto his stomach, he lets his arm hang unceremoniously off the cot. He tilts his head to the side, watching his fingers trace random patterns into the dusty earth as he pleads with his brain for rest. His mind wanders to back the Jeffersonian, the familiarity bringing him just enough relief to let the haze take him.

_Four days earlier…_

_He couldn't decide whether to hurry or to linger. His brain was telling him to hurry, that it was like ripping off a band-aid. Quick and painless. She would understand, he rationalized. Her sometimes unnerving ability to compartmentalize would have her brushing off his guilt before he could even blink._

_His heart wasn't letting him off that easy, and it sure as hell wasn't doing anything to talk himself out of his guilt. It was there, gnawing at him, telling him that he should have told her days ago when he got that damn letter. Compartmentalizing was a front, a defense mechanism when things got too hard or too confusing, and if he wouldn't let her hide behind it, then he couldn't let himself be a fucking coward either._

_He was the "heart guy." His brain never had a chance in that particular war._

_Booth sighed loudly to himself, trying to physically expel some of the pent-up tension that was currently pretzeling his stomach and had kept him up most of the night. She wouldn't be mad at him, he knew. Somehow, that made it worse._

"_Bones." He called her name as his slid his access card through the scanner and hurried up the steps onto the platform._

_She was bent over the nearest exam table with her back to him. The slightest turn of her head indicated that she heard him although she remainder where she was._

"_Just a moment, Booth," she replied calmly after a few seconds. He could hear the concentration in her voice; without even seeing her face, he knew that her brow was furrowed as she studiously kept her focus on the remains in front of her. It wasn't an open case, or rather, the corpse wasn't of a murder victim that she was assisting him with. Almost a century had passed since time of death, and the case had gone cold long ago. Booth knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bones would be able to give that poor woman her name back. He could only pray that karma had given her killer justice years ago since it was too late to catch whoever it was now._

"_Come on, Bones, it's lunch time and I'm starving. And twenty bucks says you haven't eaten a thing all day," he said, moving to stand beside her._

_She still didn't avert her gaze, which was currently fixated on the victim's jawbone. "You shouldn't be betting, Booth. You are a recovering gambling addict." Her gloved fingers lightly traced the chin, her lips pressed together as she hummed softly._

_He rolled his eyes. "Just a saying, Bones. Whatcha got there?" he asked, pointing to the skull._

"_I think I've located cause of death. Most of the evidence has disappeared along with the soft tissue, but there is a smooth, triangular knick here on the underside of the jaw that suggests that a blade, likely a common steak knife by the size, was thrust upward through the jaw and into the soft palate."_

"_Sounds like a slow, painful way to go," Booth said sympathetically._

"_Hmmm," she nodded slowly. "Yes, it would have been." She stood upright then, slowly straightening her back as she sought to ease the tension around her spine. Turning her head, she looked at Booth for the first time that day._

"_Hi," he said softly, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips._

_She gave him a curious smile, her eyebrows drawing together as she struggled to grasp his humor. He could see it in those crystal blue eyes. Her heart wanted to laugh but her brain didn't get the joke._

"_Hi," she said back, little more than a whisper. For several seconds, neither one dared to blink._

_Booth cleared his throat and clapped his hands together. "Lunch time," he declared. "I'm dying for a piece of pie." Placing his hand at the small of her back, he started to lead her off the platform._

_When they arrived at The Diner, they immediately went directly to their usual table. Their conversation during their meal consisted of their usual banter and light-hearted debates. Booth told himself that he wanted to give her, and himself, just one more lunch like old times. He'd tell her afterward. His gut called him a coward._

_When Brennan turned to gather her purse, Booth stopped her by putting his hand on the table, almost as if he was reaching for her._

"_Hold up a minute, Bones, there's something I need to talk to you about," he said, trying his hardest to keep his voice casual and calm._

_He succeeded just a bit too well._

"_Can it wait until later? I really need to get back to the lab and finish my report of the remains from this morning. I'm close enough that I may even be able to finish those chapters my publisher wants by this weekend."_

_Booth sighed, telling that voice in his head to shut up. "Sure thing. How about you come over to my place after you finish up tonight? It's kind of important that I talk to you about this today," he added, hoping that she wouldn't choose tonight to work until the wee hours of the morning._

_Brennan nodded slowly, almost as if she regretted delaying his initial request, but then smiled brightly as she slipped her arm into her coat sleeve. "Of course, Booth. Is 7 okay?"_

_Booth smiled back. "Course it is, Bones."_

_By 6:45, Booth was a mess. He was pacing around his living room, trying to come up with a plan of action and failing miserably. It didn't seem right to throw the news at her as soon as she walked through the door, but if he tried easing her into it like he had that afternoon at The Diner, he wasn't so sure he'd be able to get the words to come out of his mouth. After all, that approach had failed him once already._

_The knock on the door startled him out of his pacing. He was so fucked._

_Rushing over to the door with long, hurried strides, Booth pulled open the door, revealing a slightly grinning Brennan on the other side. Damn, he thought, he was going to be the one to take that smile off her face. She held up two white plastic bags stuffed, almost to the point of ripping, with cartons of Chinese food._

"_I thought you might be hungry," she said, her eyebrows arching hopefully._

_Booth felt a smile spread across his mouth despite the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach._

"_Always, Bones. Always." He patted his stomach invitingly._

_Her smiled widened with satisfaction as she brushed passed him to go deposit the containers in the kitchen. Booth followed, quietly observing her from a distance. She had changed clothes since lunch, trading in the dress pants for a pair of dark, fitted jeans and lower, more casual black sandaled heels. The crisp, professional blouse was now a visibly soft, navy pullover that brightened the sparkle of her eyes against the backdrop of the darker hue. Her hair, now released from the customary ponytail, fell in loose waves around her shoulders._

_She looked comfortable, maneuvering about his kitchen as if she belonged there. And she does, he thought happily before realizing how chauvinistic that sounded. Well, in the whole apartment, he mentally corrected. He liked that she seemed so at ease there, with him, work attire left behind for the evening, leaving just the two of them there, together._

_He was glad now that he had opted for the comfort of jeans and plain black t-shirt instead of leaving on his suit. That suit was meant to intimidate, dominate, and that was not what he wanted here between them._

_Booth shook himself from his reverie as Brennan handed him a loaded plate, indicating that he should find a place to sit. He decided on the couch, unwilling to do anything to break the spell of casual comfort that seemed to have settled between them. It had been like this more and more since he had returned home to recover from his surgery those many months ago. The idea of a brain tumor still unnerved him more than he would ever admit out loud, but if that was the catalyst needed for them to find themselves in this new state of relaxed, closer friendship, then so be it. He'd get a brain tumor every year if that's what it took._

_They ate in peaceful silence. It seemed that Brennan knew that Booth was wrestling with his thoughts and had decided to let him set the pace. He was relieved and thankful for her patience, but as he slowly chewed on his last bite of spring roll, he wondered if he would be able to speak if she didn't at least give him a push in the right direction._

_Finally he swallowed and turned towards her, finding that she had already set her plate to the side and was waiting for him to speak. He swallowed hard again and dropped his eyes to his knees._

"_Bones, there's something really important that I need to tell you," he said softly. He wanted to look up, to seek relief in her crystalline gaze but found that he didn't have to the strength to lift his chin towards her._

_She shifted almost imperceptibly forward, silently urging him to continue. It was almost like she had an idea of what to expect, but he wasn't sure what that was. There was no way she could know already. What did she think he would say?_

"_I got a letter," he started, clearing his throat to stall for another second. "From the army."_

_She sucked in a breath, and his gaze shot up, meeting hers. She stared back. Nope, she hadn't been expecting that._

"_I have to leave in two days. It's a specific mission, not some random deployment, but so far all I know is that I'll be flying into Dubai, though I'm sure that's far from where they're actually sending me. The letter said 'to be briefed upon arrival' which means top secret confidentiality" He was struggling now. The basic facts were out there in the open now, but he felt like there was so much more he needed to tell her. He just had no idea what those words were._

_She hadn't blinked, hadn't moved since that first small gasp. He wasn't even sure she had breathed. His eyes dropped to the floor again as his jaw muscle started to tick and jump erratically._

_He closed his eyes and waited to feel her move off the couch, waited to hear her footsteps hurrying to door and out of his life before he had the chance to walk out of hers. Because he knew that was exactly what he was telling her he was doing._

_He suddenly felt her shift on the seat next to him, and his heart clenched painfully as he squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear escaping to roll wetly down his cheekbone. He knew what was coming, but he couldn't make himself watch her leave, even if it lost him the chance for one last glimpse of her._

_Booth jumped slightly when he felt her fingers tentatively brush his shoulder. He clenched his teeth painfully, the sound of a door slamming echoing loudly inside his head, but that sound never reached his ears. Those fingers, long and slender, gripped his shoulder tightly, tugging his hunched frame up, silently begging him to look at her. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't._

"_I'm sorry, Bones, so sorry." He was rambling but it was all he could do to drone out the sound of blood rushing out of his heart. "I know I always said I wouldn't leave you, that you didn't need to be afraid of ever being abandoned again and now I'm breaking that promise. And I hate myself for it, but there's nothing I can do. I swear I tried, but this isn't about the army just needing to throw more bodies on the field… they called me up specifically for this mission because of my service record and I have no idea how long I'll be gone, and I don't even know what it is they want me to do yet…" He hated that he was justifying his leaving, but the words just came spilling out of his mouth with such violent force with he was surprised he didn't asphyxiate. Maybe if he could make her understand just enough not to hate him for what he had to do._

"_Booth, stop. Please," she said softly._

_He snapped his jaw shut, swallowing the desperate words that died on his tongue._

"_Booth its okay," Brennan said quietly but without hesitation._

_Booth shook his head, eyes still shut, head still facing toward the floor directly in front of him. "No," he said strongly, "no it's not. It is not fucking alright."_

_Brennan shook her own head slowly, struggling to find a way to get through to him. She understood that he was upset about being sent away from Parker, his job, his friends. Everything that he knew. She knew it wasn't easy for him. And though she wasn't entirely sure on the specific details, she knew that things from his military past still haunted him deeply. Some were still wounds that would never heal over._

"_Booth," she tried again, frustrated that finding words of comfort was so difficult for her. "Booth, you have nothing to apologize for, it's not as though this is something you chose. You were given words and it is your duty to follow them. It's not as though you have a choice," she said, though it pained her to do so._

_She tightened her grip on his shoulder, letting her thumb absently stroke his back gently. "I know you must be afraid after the torture you went through last time—"_

"_I haven't even thought about that, Bones," he interrupted._

_Brennan was silent for a second, wishing that she hadn't brought those memories back to him. She grimaced; she really was no good at this sort of thing._

"_But Booth, if you aren't afraid… I don't underst—"_

"_I am afraid, Bones," he admitted quietly._

"_But you just—"_

"_Please don't hate me," he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. She had to strain to hear him correctly._

"_Oh Booth, no. No, I could never hate you, especially not for this. How could you even think that? It is illogical that I would hate you for something that is completely out of your control." She didn't understand. He was acting as though he had something to be guilty for, though she couldn't even begin to imagine why._

_Booth finally brought his head up to meet her eyes with his own dark, clouded stare. "Because I'm leaving you, Bones. And I can't… I won't promise you that I'll come back because I couldn't bear it if I ever broke that promise."_

"_Booth…" she breathed, bringing her other hand up to cup his cheek, drawing his face closer to hers. Booth froze, unsure of what was happening, but then when Brennan brought her cheek to rest against his, her breath puffing hotly against his ear, he closed his eyes, choking back the sob of relief that pulled at his throat._

_His coma had changed her too, he realized, though more so than he previously thought. Looking back, he could see that she invited more of his touch than she had before, that she wasn't always the first to break away from their prolonged stares as she had once been. And he couldn't help but wonder, longingly, just how far she had stepped in his direction._


	3. You Are My Faith

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

"_Where is that faith you are always trying to convince me of, Booth?" she questioned, her voice a hushed caress inside his ear. "You have spent the last four years trying to convince me that to have faith in something or someone, however irrational, is a quintessential part of the human experience. Are you retracting your previous arguments?" she asked, a lace of disbelieving indignance in her breathy tone. Booth desperately wanted to look into her eyes, to see what emotions he would find brimming there. But that would require him to pull himself away from her close embrace, and that was a trade he just couldn't will himself to make._

"_Answer me, Booth," she continued, though she wasn't ready to give him a moment to reply just yet. Somehow she needed to make him understand what she wanted to say. The difficulty was, she had no idea what it was she feeling, let alone how to voice that to him._

_She needed him to clarify the irrationality of her emotions, but she knew she needed to give him more data before he'd be able to help her reach a conclusion._

_Brennan stroked his rough cheek softly with her hand, splaying her fingers slightly to encompass more of him as she pressed his unresisting face closer against the side of hers. She could feel the tickle of his eyelashes against her cheekbone as they fluttered closed, his nostrils flaring slightly to draw in more of her scent. Her other hand, still gripping his shoulder, smoothed around his upper back in a slow caress before wrapping around his back, pulling their upper bodies together in a tight hug. Absently she let her thumb swipe back and forth across the base of his neck, brushing the pad of her thumb through his short, soft hair._

_This new proximity was both adding to her confusion and easing it at the same time in a frustrating paradox. Her stomach tightened and her thoughts whirled with blinding speed inside her head, but the painful clenching under her left rib cage seemed to loosen, making her almost sigh with relief._

"_All those times you told me that I needed to experience the world with my heart rather than my brain, however ridiculous that notion is because the heart has absolutely no definitive cognitive abilities…." She paused when she felt him laugh silently, her eyelids sinking shut as his hot breath fanned her neck. "You are being hypocritical by offering advice that you yourself are unwilling to follow," she breathed, unable to muster the conviction in her voice that she had hoped for._

_Unable to resist, Booth pulled his head back just far enough to see her face. A quiet laugh bubbled out of his throat. "You going all freaky Friday on me, Bones?"_

"_I have no idea what that means," she said, her brow knitting in confusion._

_At that Booth laughed, sniffling lightly as another tear fought its way out of the corner of his eye. A grin cut across Brennan's face as his laughter infected her, and she leaned forward again, resting her forehead against his as she reclaimed that proximity she was finding she craved. Both of them closed their eyes once again, unable to focus with so many senses being so strongly and simultaneously affected. Booth's large, warm hands were suddenly curling around her waist in a loose embrace, returning her hug, and Brennan let a breath pass between parted lips._

"_You, Bones… the perpetual rationalizer of the godless universe… are telling me, a born and raised Catholic man, that he just needs to have a little faith?" Booth chuckled. "I believe a serious role reversal as occurred." His fingers flexed around her waist, trying to soak in as much of her warmth through her sweater as he could._

_Brennan shook her head slightly, careful not to break that precious contact with him. "First of all, Booth, 'rationalizer' is not a word—"_

"_Shakespeare made up thousands of words, Bones."_

_Booth grinned at the sound of her soft hum. He didn't need to see it to know that she was frowning._

"_Point conceded," she grumbled before continuing. "And second, I do not understand your claim of a reversal in our so-called roles. It is not as though we are flat, archetypal characters unable to evolve to reflect change—"_

_Suddenly Booth brought his hand up to cup her jaw, stilling its movements as he gently pressed his thumb against her lips._

"_Bones, stop… please," he warned softly. This was no time to let the intellectual part of her brain rule her train of thought. "Talk to me," he urged._

_She was quiet for several minutes, leaving Booth to wonder if she was going to answer him while Brennan was silently fumbling through her vocabulary for words that she wasn't sure even existed. These feelings twisting like serpents inside of her were so frustratingly confusing, it didn't seem possible that mankind could have ever created words to ever accurately represent their power and severity._

_Knowing that they weren't exactly what she wanted but unable to think of better substitutes, Brennan squeezed her eyes tightly shut and whispered her soul against his lips. "You tell me… teach me… that metaphorically opening the heart allows the empirically impossible to become… real, but I don't… I cant…"_

_A moment of clarity hit Booth with all the force of a Mack truck. If that's what a true and honest epiphany felt like, he hoped that this would be the last one he had to suffer through._

_Sometimes Bones's truths were more shocking than anyone else's lies. He couldn't even imagine what his reaction would be if he ever found out she'd lied to him. But he knew that was a hypothetical he would never have to face._

_If anything, Bones could be too honest. But never not enough._

_There she was, waiting for him to respond. She had just bared all… bared the soul she didn't believe that she had to him. Had she put any stock in prayer, she imagined that's what she would have been doing at that moment._

_Booth leaned in a little more, letting the tip of his nose slide along hers, his hand still resting along her jaw, fingers fanned out on her neck with his thumb brushing the corner of her moth as he whispered back. _

"_You need my faith." His voice made it a question though both knew better. He held his breath, waiting for her to pull away, to refute his accusation that she needed something so irrational, but it never came._

"_Yes," she breathed as she pulled in closer, only a thought's distance between their slightly parted lips._

_And she could honestly admit she did. Her logical mind wouldn't allow her to entertain such thoughts on her own without frustrating herself with the inability to reconcile these two mutually exclusive hypotheses. Logic was too well-rooted, her need for rational science too deeply ingrained for her to just abandon it in favor of something as subjective, irrational and ever-changing as faith. But with Booth there on the sidelines of her logic, always reminding her that some things did seem to exist outside the boundaries of science, she could almost… almost allow herself to feel it. It was as though the strength of his unwavering faith gave her something that was as close to tangible evidence as she could ever hope to achieve on this plane of existence._

_Her brain, his heart. Her logic, his faith. Mutually exclusive like the polar ends a magnet, always struggling but unable to be close enough to each other. But one could not exist without the other. And if they just pushed hard enough… existence began to blur into a place where two objects _could_ occupy the same space without fear of paradoxical impossibility._

_She needed him to believe in what she could not._

_At her encouragement, Booth took a leap of faith and stole away that last thought that stood between them._

_His fingers slid around to the back of her neck, burrowing into her hair as he pressed their lips together. For many seconds, that was enough, overwhelming as they sat paralyzed by their sudden connection. His fingers tangled in the hair at the base of her neck, his other hand still resting just above her hip. Her forearm still smoothed along the back of his shoulders while her other hand had never released its grasp on his stubbled cheek. Their lips clung in a sweet, motionless kiss._

_The tumor that had taken root inside Booth's head had forced Brennan's hand and driven her emotions roaring to the surface. Murders and psychopaths could be caught and put in jail… controlled. But Brennan had been brutally reminded that nature and random chance were forces that she was powerless against, however much she might hate it. And they were always there and ready to rip him away from her at a moment's notice._

_Ever logical, Brennan had been faced with two choices. To have as much as him as she could for as long as she could, or retreat and try to find that version of herself that had existed satisfactorily before he had come barreling into her life. But she had only lasted two days before she realized that part of her that could live without him didn't existed anymore. And there was Booth… her tangible, touchable Booth… and deep down she knew she could never turn her back on him. Not when he made her wish so fervently for that faith that was always just out of her reach._

_But now here he was, finally within her grasp, and she clutched onto her faith with desperately seeking fingers._

_A humming moan filled the silence with longing._

_Movement caught them simultaneously. Brennan slide her arm up to lock her elbow behind his neck, pulling his chest closer to hers as her other hand started to explore his face, stroking his cheek and jaw and neck with hungry fingers. Booth was on his own mission, finding every possible path through her auburn hair with one hand while his other moved to its customary place at the small of her back, for the first time slipping beneath the fabric to caress the skin previously kept from him. All the while, both tried to give equal attention to the giving and receiving ends of their affections, cataloging every caress of skin and hair and hot, hot flesh._

_Brennan's lips parted as she hummed against his lips, pleading for his invasion into her mouth, desperate for his warmth to finally fill her. And he did, sending his tongue so deep into her mouth he wasn't sure he'd ever find the way back. Not that he cared in the slightest. He was home. And Brennan could have wept with the strong relief that filled her but instead gripped him tighter, silently begging him to take more of her._

_For the first time in her life, Brennan began to understand just how sweet surrender could be. But only with him. There was never anyone but him._

_When burning lungs demanded oxygen, they let their bottom lips peel away from one another, leaving their upper lips to cling together desperately as their breaths puffed hotly between them. But seconds were too long as their moist mouths slide together once more, holding on for dear life._

_It was hard to focus. There was so much sensation, so much all-consuming, boiling emotion. So Brennan took Booth's wise advice and popped her heart into overdrive._

_Her tongue brushed his in a wanton caress. His large hand palmed her lower on her hip, his fingers kneading the muscle of her upper thigh. Both her arms wrapped around his neck, bring her chest flush against his, feeling as their erratic heartbeats met in tandem. _

_Within minutes they were locked in a hopeless tangle of limbs and panting breaths. Nothing remained stationary between them as their bodies sought to explore every possible way they could fit together, unable to decide which positions felt best. _

_Neither noticed when Booth leaned over her, pressing her back down into the soft sofa cushions. She arched her body into him, pushing up and slipped her arms under his, wrapping around his back as her hands locked onto his shoulder blades to keep him close. Their mouths continued to feast hungrily, groaning, biting, licking, tasting… never once letting the need for air to force them apart completely._

_Wiggling her leg out from where it was trapped underneath him, Brennan was able to wrap it securely around his waist while the other was snuggly pinned between his own. Both moaned with frustrated satisfaction as his hard erection pressed the inside of her thigh, the friction of his jeans causing his hips to rock gently between her legs. That, combined with the roughness of Brennan's own tight denim caused her breathing to quicken and her heart to thump with the most delicious sort of pain._

_Both of them couldn't help but wonder how long the other had been waiting for them to make the first move into this new phase of their partnership, each regretting that they hadn't been bolder sooner. Booth berated himself as a coward while Brennan found herself irritated with her own deftness at compartmentalizing her emotions. But regret was short-lived as the present quickly overwhelmed the past._

_Booth moved his hands up along her ribs with tantalizingly slow strokes, brushing her through the soft fibers of her sweater. Sighing his name into his mouth, Brennan reached for one of his hands with her own, and with her palm pressed against his knuckles, her fingers entwined with his, she guided his palm up around her side to rest heavily against her breast before returning her hand to the back of his head, her nails scraping through his hair. Booth moaned helplessly, unable to resist flexing and kneading his fingers into her breast, feeling the intoxicating rhythm of her heartbeat beneath his palm._

_When she felt his hand pull away, Brennan nearly reached for his hand to guide him back where she desperately wanted him, but then she felt his hot fingers at the waistband of her jeans, slipping underneath her sweater, trailing a burning path across her abdomen before cupping her breast through only the thin lace of her bra._

"_Ahhh…" she cried against his tongue, gently sinking her teeth into his tender flesh as she writhed beneath the weight of him._

_Almost reluctantly, Booth tore his mouth away from hers, his heart twisting at her groaning protest before he latched his lips onto the smooth skin of her neck, scraping and biting her with his teeth while simultaneously soothing her with gentle strokes of his tongue. The delicate, adept fingers that were cupping the base of his skull continued to toy with the sensitive, tingling nape of his neck while the other slithered down his back before slipping into the back pocket of his jeans, nails digging into his ass, pushing his pelvis tighter against hers as he obligingly increased the speed of his gentle, grinding, friction-charged thrusts._

_Brennan cried out again, louder than before and suddenly realized how lonely her lips felt with his currently occupied with the hollow of her throat. Tugging his other unoccupied hand away from the edge of her sweater, she brought his fingers up to her waiting mouth, letting a few hot, teasing gasps wisp over his thumb before sucking it into her between her lips, laving the pad of his thumb with her wet tongue, earning the most delicious rumbling gasp from deep within his chest. Moving lower, Booth trailed his tongue along the skin of her chest that was exposed by the v-neck of her sweater, his busy hand never slowing its assault on her lace-covered breast, using the textured material to tease her nipple through the barrier._

_Suddenly gripping the edge of his t-shirt, Brennan yanked it up over his back, desperate to feel his naked skin on hers. Allowing his thumb to slip away from her lips, she finally opened her eyes to watch him struggle to pull his arm through the sleeve without relinquishing his other hand's hold on her breast. He was equally unwilling to remove his lips from their sucking grip on her left clavicle, but after enough blind struggling he managed to maneuver his one arm free which he immediately snuck underneath her arched back, splaying his fingers wide between her shoulders as though he would cup her whole body to him with one impossibly large hand._

"_One down, two to go," Brennan whispered in his ear as he nibbled his way up to the pulse point on her neck. Grabbing at the material now bunched at the back of his neck, she pulled again, forcing the soft cotton between his lips and her flesh as she fought to wrestle it over his head. Booth growled his disapproval at his loss until the material finally slipped over his mouth, freeing his lips before catching on the underside of his nose. With only his mouth free and the rest of his face wrapped in the tangles of his black shirt, he blindly dropped his mouth back to hers, savagely thrusting his tongue passed her lips to tease the roof of her mouth until she whimpered at the sheer ferocity of his kiss. Bringing her hands to his face, she frantically worked the shirt the rest of the way over his head so that she could finally fist his hair tightly between her fingers, bringing him ever closer, his kiss ever deeper._

_He pulled away to gaze down her when he felt her yanking at the remains of his shirt, which was now only hanging limply from the tensed, bulging bicep of the arm that was stroking the underside of her naked breast, the inhibiting cup of her bra having already been pushed up and out of the way of his kneading fingers._

"_I want this off, Booth," she said huskily, pulling harder at the last shirt sleeve._

_Booth shook his head and grinned evilly. "I'm not letting go, Bones, so you'll just have to figure something else out for the time being," he said before ducking his head to taste the other side of her neck, squeezing her breast harder to reiterate his declaration._

"_Fine," Brennan huffed, pushing against his naked shoulders with both hands until his upper body peeled away from hers. Shocked at feeling her push him away, Booth's head shot up to meet her gaze, startled by the sudden change in her mood._

_Quick as a thought, Brennan used his distance to slip her hands between them to grip the edge of her sweater, wiggling her body as she pulled it swiftly over her head and tossed it to the floor. As shocked and confused as he was, Booth couldn't contain the moan that tore from him as her twisting and writhing squeezed his straining erection harder between her thighs. Brennan's eyes flickered to his for a split second before pushing his hand away from her breast, and then she was grasping his face between her hands and yanking his head down to her now exposed breast. Catching on quickly, Booth sucked her nipple into his mouth and bit down hard._

"_Ahh… oh god yesss…" she cried, the fingers of one hand fisting in his hair, pushing his mouth harder against her body as the other stroked its way up his arm to grip the dangling shirt, tearing it down his arm savagely._

_Between the strokes of his tongue Booth chuckled. "Happy now?" he asked, his voice muffled against her skin._

"_Mmm… I'm getting there, ohhh…" she sighed happily._

"_Hold on," Booth groaned as he moved one hand under her ass, the other wrapping around her back as he hoisted her into a sitting position with her awkwardly straddling him, his mouth still latched onto her breast, though he had moved to give the other equal attention. Brennan's arms locked around his neck, one arm coiling up into his hair as she felt him struggle to stand while still holding her flush against him. She wrapped her legs high around his waist as he managed to pull himself upright and started blindly walking them down the hallway, Brennan letting out small warnings when it looked as though he was about to crash into anything. She wasn't any more eager for him to tear his mouth away from her flesh than he was._

"_Turn right, Booth… no my right—" she let out a whoosh of air as her back struck the wall, his body pinning her there._

"_Damn it, Bones, you're supposed to be steering," Booth grumbled against her sternum, licking a hot, wet trail directly up the center of her throat to her chin._

"_Ah ha, now I see the price for letting me drive. You should have told me, Booth… I would have done this years ago if I'd known it'd get me behind the wheel." Her valiant attempt at sarcasm lost some of its punch with her voice unable to muster anything beyond a heady crooning. But Booth laughed again even as his fingers found the clasp of her bra and successfully pulled it from her, finally leaving them both totally bare from the waist up._

"_This doesn't mean I'll let you drive the Tahoe," he said smugly as he licked the shell of her ear._

"_But Booth, I'm an excellent driver."_

_He cut her off with a kiss, hard and fast as both hands moved to cup her ass, driving his denim-covered erection between her legs as his tongue pulsed inside her mouth, effectively ending any desire to discuss driving arrangements._

_Booth pulled away just enough to whisper against her lips, "I'm driving tonight, Bones." Brennan felt herself flush hotly at the burning lust dancing in his eyes, pupils so dilated they'd bled to black. Yes, she realized, tonight she wanted him behind the wheel, guiding her through this whole new aspect of emotion-charged physical connection she hadn't truly believed existed outside fiction._

"_Ok," she whispered back before gently biting his lower lip, sucking it into her mouth with a satisfying moan._

_Booth was somewhat surprised she had acquiesced so easily, but he wasn't foolish enough to question his good fortune. Pushing off the wall, they finally stumbled their way into the darkened bedroom, Brennan still wrapped around Booth's large, lithe body as they tripped and landed on the bed, Booth instinctually pinning her smaller feminine form beneath him._

_The silliness that had found them in the hallway quickly melted away in the newfound darkness, the fire of their passion burning up everything except that desperate need for one another that never truly left either of them. They moved frantically, grappling blindly with each other as they struggled with the final remnants of their clothes, the last barriers between them that couldn't be shed fast enough._

_Booth's shaking hands gripped the hem of her tight jeans, fumbling for the top button with clumsy fingers that felt swollen and useless for such an intricate task. He almost cried with relief when he felt the button give before moving on to the zipper. But Brennan was busy herself, cupping the rock-hard bulge of him through his jeans while she fought against his own difficult button with only slightly more success._

_Booth gave a strangled, choking moan that the feel of her hand stroking him roughly through the stiff material, and he bucked his hips wildly into her hand, his body begging to press so tightly into her that they might actually fuse together on an atomic level._

"_Oh god, please… Bones, please." And then he fell on her mouth, giving her a long, sucking kiss as he pressed his hips down, trapping her hand between his erection and her pelvis, grinding in fast rotations against her rhythmically squeezing fingers. Gripping him harder, she used her other hand to yank down her own zipper, wrestling the tight material of her jeans and panties over her hips when she felt him touch her, tenderly stroking his hand between legs, feeling just how ready she was for him._

_Their mouths pulled back slightly, lips still clinging precariously even as they sucked desperately needed oxygen into their lungs, sharing air just like they shared everything else. "Bones," he breathed, his lips gliding back over her with soft tenderness even as their hands resumed their frantic tugging until they were both finally free of every last scrap of offensive fabric that sought to put distance between them._

_They broke the kiss as Booth readied the tip of himself against her, pulling their heads back far enough that they could have seen into each other's eyes had there been any light in that dark, dark room. As it was, they were blind to each other but still needed to pull back, to see, even if it was through their minds' eyes, their faces as Booth drove his hips forward, pushing smoothly into her body until he could go no further. They cried out together, Booth's head dropping to bury his face in her sweat-dampened hair while Brennan's whole body arched into his slick, hard body, the column of her throat brushing against his stubbled cheek as she threw her head back in the most erotic of tingling caresses. Her hands smoothed their way down the broad expanse of his moist back, feeling the muscles shift and coil under her touch until they reached his hips, splaying her fingers against him as she silently urged with him to move._

_Booth left soft pecking kisses up from her ear across her cheek until he reached her mouth, burying his tongue between her swollen, silk lips, coiling her tongue with his own as he rotated his hips in a gentle thrust. Brennan moaned loudly, sucking harder on his tongue as she licked the underside of it with hers, tilting her pelvis up to better accommodate him between her legs, her nails digging into the taut flesh of his ass as they guided each other, showing and learning each other's bodies with a strange but satisfying frantic tenderness._

_She screamed softly as he thrust particularly hard, so he did it again, harder and faster, earning a louder scream and a frantic "don'tstop…ohgoddon'tyoudarestop!" Booth grunted, biting her just below the ear as he pumped faster and faster. He wanted to hear that scream again. Dammit, she'd scream his name so loud the windows would shatter if he had any say in it._

_Her orgasm hit her with all the force of a wayward locomotive, her blood pounding so hard in her veins that for a moment she feared her eardrums might actually rupture as an almost unbearable pulsing filled her ears. Every nerve ending sizzled, sending volts of pleasure throbbing through every organ, every muscle and every single delicate, dangerous and oh-so-good emotion she'd ever felt._

_And Booth got what he was so desperately after. She screamed his name as she knotted her fingers in his hair, pushing his face into her neck with so much force he thought he might actually suffocate. Ok so the windows hadn't shattered but Booth was sure it'd be a few hours before his hearing completely returned to normal._

_But still he couldn't stop, wanting her to ride the wave of her orgasm for as long as was possible. When her grip loosened just enough, he used his arms to push his body into a push-up position, his chest now hovering tantalizingly above her and the angle of his thrusts changing enough to force her over the edge of another mind-shattering orgasm._

"_Come… on… Booth," she gasped. "Come… with me."_

_Leaning up, Brennan pressed wet kisses to his sweat-slick chest muscles even as he continued to thrust inside her. Dragging her lower lip across his chest and over his wildly thumping heartbeat, she gave a sucking kiss to his nipple before biting down. Hard._

_Booth cried out as she threw him over the edge, gasping as he perched on dangerously shaking arms, hovering over her before she found the strength to reach up with lazy limbs and pull him down on top of her, his rough cheek pillowed on her breast with his waist still cradled gently between her thighs as they waited for their breathing to slow to normal._

_There was so much more that needed to be said between them, and their window of opportunity was closing fast with the approach of his, hopefully temporary, departure, but for now, enough had been said between them that night. The rest could wait until the morning… the rest of that night would consist of communication of a different nature he thought contentedly as he started to drift off to the feel of her fingers stroking soothingly through the hair at the base of his skull. He'd give her time to recuperate, he thought with a silent sigh to himself… and then he'd wake her up so they could get in some more practice on their communication skills. Their therapist should be so proud of them, he decided with a goofy smile before pressing a gentle kiss against the curve of her breast and letting sleep claim him._


	4. Something So Precious

Just a quick note before this chapter... thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review this story, your reflections and encouragements are greatly appreciated so thanks for taking the time. Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to respond to them, but if anyone specifically wants one, just ask and I'll do my best. This story basically started out as a writing exercise while I've been having writer's block on my own works, but I've really enjoyed writing this and since I never do anything halfway, this will definitely be a full-fledged story so prepare for the long-haul on this one.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_Something soft and sweet was moving over him, each passing brush eliciting the most delicious tightening in his abdomen, and Booth struggled to drag his brain back into consciousness even as those so-tender caresses threatened to lull his mind back into that most satisfying, dreamless sleep. He purred and snuggled his face tighter against his warm pillow, his lips parting slightly so that his deep, even breaths tickled the skin underneath him while a voice in the back of his mind urgently reminded him that time was so, so precious. He heard a soft, melodious humming break through the silence and wondered if she was having as much trouble clearing the foggy haze from her brain as he was._

"_You awake, Bones?" he grumbled against her skin, already knowing that she was but longing for any excuse to have her voice caress his ear while he was still in a position to feel the vibrations of her speech against his cheek. _

_They had fallen asleep together as they had laid, neither having the energy or the desire to move away after he had collapsed on top of her chest, enveloping her body with his much larger frame. His head still rested on her warm body, his ear pressing against that steady heartbeat that had pulled him willingly into sleep, finally able to rest with the evidence of her thrumming beneath him. His arms held tight to her body above his head, his large hands wrapped delicately around her ribs as he caged her with his limbs, unable to let her go even as he slipped from this world into that calm, peaceful darkness._

"_Hmmm," was all she was able to respond, the sleep that still drugged her making speech difficult as her lips felt too heavy to articulate any intelligent language. Even her tongue felt thick and uncoordinated as she sucked on it lightly and forced her eyes to flutter open in the darkness._

_Her hands continued their slow and lavish journey up and down his back, stroking him lazily as she focused her every attention on absorbing as much of his warmth, of him, through her fingers as she could. Booth purred again as he finally recognized the feeling that had coaxed him so gloriously into waking. It looked like she had missed him during their sleep as much as he'd missed her, as it sounded as though she hadn't even really been awake when she'd first started stroking him._

_With his eyes still closed, Booth slowly twisted his head, dragging the burn of his short whiskers across her skin until his lips were pressing against her, placing a soft, wet kiss on the swell of her left breast. It was Brennan's turn to purr, helpless as it bubbled out of her throat, and when Booth lifted his head to perch his chin against her chest, he could see the pale column of her neck arch invitingly as her head rolled back in gentle, quiet ecstasy. Still groggy, Booth could already feel his body react to her presence and her slow, sensual writhing, his chest and groin swelling with the simmering need that threatened to quickly overwhelm him body and soul._

_Relaxing to rest the full weight of his sleep-heavy body against her, Booth stilled, waiting patiently as Brennan awakened fully back into herself, finally lifting her glowing blue gaze to meet his through the shadows of his otherwise silent bedroom._

"_Hi," he said softly when finally she looked at him, an easy grin giving the slightest tug at the corner of his lips._

"_Hi," she whispered back, her gentle smile setting her bright eyes ablaze with love and desire, and Booth wanted to feel that fire burn so hot against his skin that he would never heal, never wanting to let the scars of their passion fade from his body or his heart._

_Moving with slow and deliberate feline grace, he pushed himself up with his arms just enough to allow him to crawl up her body, dragging his naked chest across hers, feeling her heartbeat quicken against his own as their nipples brushed enticingly. All the while his dark eyes never dropped from where they were snared by hers, a willing prisoner of her mesmerizing adoration._

_Settling deeper into her while still supporting most of his weight on his arms, Booth lowered his face to hers before pulling her lips into a slow, drugging kiss, rolling his tongue through her waiting, parted lips and over her own, stroking smoothly across the roof of her mouth as he retracted teasingly, only to repeat the action in response to her throaty, desperate whimper. His eyes remained open, connected with hers, speaking silently to her through his gaze and his kiss until her own tongue finally caught his, pressing him between hers and the silky wall of her inner cheek. A delighted moan rumbled through him and into her as his eyes closed heavily, focusing all his energy on the heady feel and taste of her._

_Brennan's hand gripped his bicep, her nails digging into that toned, smooth muscle that bulged just right beneath her fingers, heightening her desire as she palmed the sheer strength of him with her hand, feeling the power of him coil so protectively around her. Her other hand slid languidly up between their bodies to delicately finger his throat, lightly scraping her fingernails over the prickly whiskers near his Adam's apple._

_Finally, reluctantly, they pulled their lips apart, panting heavily into the short space between them. Booth gazed down at her tenderly, reaching up to gently push a wayward strand of hair from her face before running the pad of his thumb high across her delicate cheekbone._

"_I can see you, Booth," she panted softly, noticing for the first time since she awakened that her vision was no longer completely useless to her._

"_I see you too, Bones," he said huskily, pecking her lips in a chaste but intense kiss as he steeled himself to look away from her, casting his glance towards the open bedroom window for a moment. Light was indeed cutting through the darkness now, silver, celestial moonlight bathing them in its snowy haze. The cloud-thick sky must have cleared sometime during the night, stealing their desperate, passionate darkness from them and replacing it with something softer, more ethereal and yet more intimate than their previous groping blindness._

_There was nothing left to shield them now. Clothes had been stripped off, their bare bodies left exposed and vulnerable to one another, but the darkness had stood between them, casting a thin veil of anonymity between them, allowing them to touch, to feel, to know but never to see each other even as they were locked in the most intimate of embraces._

_But now he could see her. He could see into those oh-so familiar eyes that now shone like quicksilver as the moonlight stole the blue from them, allowing him to slip inside her soul as easily as he had previously slipped inside her body. She enveloped him, ensnared him, and he knew then that even when he was forced to tear himself away, he'd be leaving a piece of his soul behind in hers, but knowing and trusting that she'd keep it safe for him whenever he returned._

_When he returned to her. It was never a question… only a matter of time._

_Brennan cast a small, hesitant smile up at him, cupping his cheek while she soothed her fingers across his temple, caressing his furrowed brow. His expression had turned serious all of a sudden, sadness pooling inside the black, bottomless eternity of his eyes, and she reached up towards him with her lips, trailing delicate, tender kisses over his jaw, his forehead, his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, each of his cheeks, finally coming to rest against his lips as she sought to relieve his pain by taking it into herself, not knowing that in a way, she already had._

_Booth swallowed hard against the storm battering his mind, trying to push away thoughts about how unfair it was that he was forced to leave her just now when they'd finally found their way to each other. His chest felt hollow and cold at the very idea of letting her go, knowing that, despite every other hellish nightmare he'd suffered and somehow survived, that was the moment that would break him. But somehow he would find his way back to her, drawn back to the shard of his soul that he'd lost inside hers, the only part of him that was ever truly safe. She was his protector, he realized suddenly, just the way he'd always been hers. And suddenly he'd never felt stronger or more alive… knowing now that she kept him as he has he had _always_ kept her._

_Gazing down at her, tasting her on the air between them, Booth cocked his head slightly, studying the planes of her face with solemn, glittering eyes, flickering from her lips to the slight, worried crease on her brow before finding her eyes again, sighing breathily through his nose as his lips thinned with concentration._

"_I see you," he repeated softly, his voice barely audible over the thickness of the silence that had settled between them._

_Brennan tipped her chin and nodded with slow but unwavering certainty, not daring to even blink, trying desperately to show him that she understood he meant so much more than those simple words literally implied._

"_And I need you," she answered._

_The moment flared between them, fire sparked and set ablaze by the moonlight that revealed them to each other the way nothing else ever had. And they were helpless to the flames that licked at them, urging them to action, both more than happy to surrender everything they had as long as they burned together._

_Brennan shifted her hands, one gripping onto him where his neck and shoulder joined with solid muscle and smooth bone, fingers digging into the hard bulk of him while the other slipped higher up the other side of his neck, her thumb resting against the line of his jaw while her fingers slide through the short hair behind his ear to the base of his skull. Booth was still hovering on his arms, his face watching hers intently, his hips having never left where they nestled between her thighs, so it was an easy move for him to press forward, spearing himself inside her all at once with a fast, hard thrust._

"_Uhhhmmm," she moaned as she welcomed him home._

_Booth growled as he fought against the urge to clench his eyes shut at the sudden ecstasy of her hot, tight body gripping him, cradling him, binding him to her forever, and he found himself hoping desperately that there was something beyond forever because even that would never be enough for him. Instead he locked his gaze onto hers, his face hovering inches above her own, watching her as he drove himself deep. Now his eyes didn't flicker, didn't waver, drowning in the quicksilver of her._

"_Do you understand what you do to me?" he grunted through gritted teeth. "Do you understand what you're asking of me?" And what you're allowing me to take, he thought to himself, afraid to breathe that particular question._

"_Yes, I…" she cried as her body arched, her hips thrusting to meet him, their bodies roiling together, rolling against one another as waves of heat flooded them while they moved in unison. "I do. I… I see you, Booth… all of you, please…"_

_Their gaze cemented the emotion between them, desperate and longing-filled adoration ripping through them, tearing and slicing even as it healed and soothed and rescued. Metamorphosis and resurrection dismantling, rearranging and finally putting them back together, though never quite the same for having been broken, but it was better that way. They were better for the wounds they bared. And they offered them to each other, needing the stories of their lives to been seen by that one other person. Both needing the other to love them despite the scars they carried… and because of them._

_Shadows floated between them, dancing across the planes of their faces as they read each other's lives through their eyes, unguarded, naked and frighteningly honest. Her silver irises sluiced through the viscid blackness she found in his while Booth was shocked by the chilling wave that struck him at the blatant offering he saw reflected in her own metallic stare._

_Booth gave a panting gasp low in his throat as she unknowingly tore a confession from him, the press of her warm body making him wish he could somehow bare more of himself to her. "Bones, I… for so long I've been so angry, so lost… everything that's happened, and I… the things I've done… that I hate that I've done…"_

_A harsh cry strangled his words as his body sped up, the heat of their friction scorching him as he glided over her, inside her, through her. But he couldn't hide behind their passion… he needed her, needed her to know…_

_Brennan was struggling, digging her nails so deep into his shoulder she was sure there'd be bloodied crescent memories for him to see later as she fought not to break eye contact despite her desperate need to taste him. But somehow she managed to stay steady, her body undulating beneath the pounding force of him, her head rocking slightly against the pillow from the thrusting speed in which his body claimed hers._

"_It's alright, Booth," she cooed, stroking his cheek with her thumb. No matter what he said or didn't say, it was alright._

_Booth grunted, forcing the words through his struggling lips even as he drove himself higher and harder, his voice quaking in rhythm with his surging body. "There are things missing inside me, Bones," he hissed quickly before he lost the courage that honesty required. Honesty was the heart of everything between them. "Things I don't think I'll ever have again._

"_But I found enough of me, Bones… I found myself the minute I lost myself in you."_

_He broke her heart, her chest muscles tightening in painful spasms so strong she thought her ribs might break at his confession. That he questioned his humanity and found himself wanting, lacking, that this man who against all the logic she could muster managed to embody every irrational, romantic ideal she'd always been too scared and disappointed to believe in, that he doubted the goodness in him hurt her so much that tears glossed her eyes, wetting her lashes. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, biting gently as she fought to control the hurt she felt for him._

_She felt the heaviness of his head against her palm just as he threatened to drop his face, seeking to hide his gaze from her as he was overcome with embarrassment at his quiet, ragged admission, ashamed that maybe he had put too much on her, asked her to share too much of his burden with him. But Brennan wouldn't let him._

"_Look at me, Booth," she demanded, squeezing his hips hard with her thighs, pushing her pelvis up into his at the height of a rough thrust, earning a surprised sucking gasp from him as his eyes flew obediently back to hers, desperate and terrified of what he would find there._

"_What do you need, Booth?" she asked, her soothing voice laced with patient understanding, begging with him not to hide himself from her. "Tell me what you need."_

"_You," he breathed._

"_You have me," she promised._

"_I need more," he agonized._

"_Then take it, Booth… take everything… take all of me," she pleaded, offering her own scars to him in return._

_Her hand slipped down his clavicle to cover his heart, her slender fingers splayed out across his sweat-slick, glistening skin as she pressed into the wall of him, palming his heartbeat, the most precious thing she had ever experienced. With a grunting cry Booth fell on her, finally bringing his dry lips to hers, moaning as she immediately glossed them with her tongue soothingly while he dropped his weight to rest on his forearms, bringing his upper body in tight against hers, sinking into the warm, soft body beneath him. Her hand was now trapped between their writhing bodies, reveling in each quickening beat of his heart as it pulsed against her fingers. Shifting his weight, Booth forced a hand between them, finding her hand and entwining her fingers with his own so that they shared the pounding heartbeat between them._

_Brennan sighed her satisfaction against his thrusting tongue as he reacquainted himself with her, seemingly starving from the short time it had been since he had last tasted her. Wanting him to take all that she offered him without fear or hesitation, she curled one of her legs high around his rolling hips, resting it against the small of his back while she traced the ball of her other foot up and down the back of his hard calf muscle. The change in position opened herself up more to him, and he sank deeper, biting her lip with a surprised groan._

_She arched her neck as he pushed in again, but Booth refused to relinquish her mouth in favor of her alabaster skin. He curled over her slightly, his longer frame allowing him to chase after her lips as her head tipped back in ecstasy, her head tossing mindlessly from side to side while he pursued her mouth, catching her chin and jaw with a few rough pecks before finally catching her, slanting over her swollen lips, anchoring her to him with a deep, exploratory reach of his tongue. She moaned in delight, and the alpha male in Booth growled in satisfaction at the willing surrender of his quarry._

_A scream ripped her lips from his by its sheer ferocity, and Booth felt her body clutch him in a deliciously unbearable vice, her fingers snagging his hair as she wanted to ride out the pulsing heat with the heady flavor of him coiling around her tongue. But Booth held back, pressing his forehead against hers as he waited for her to open her eyes to him, knowing that when she did, he'd glimpse a flash of that forever beyond forever that he wanted so, so badly._

"_Look at me, Bones. Please… let me see you," he urged, his lips brushing hers softly as he whispered to her._

_She couldn't deny him what he wanted. Forcing her eyelids open against the heavy, drugging pleasure that was coursing through her, melting her into his hard, smooth body as he pulsed around her, inside and out, Brennan somehow found the strength to bring her eyes to meet his. Those black eyes speared her, so intense, feral, primal, and oh-so hungry and yet somehow so heartbreakingly gentle, so human that she wondered if there had honestly ever been anyone who better represented that glorious utopian potential to which the rest of mankind had yet to evolve to. Bringing both her hands up to cup his face, Brennan kissed him sweetly, cradling him with all the tenderness that she had it in herself to give._

_They stayed like that long after their writhing had ceased and their orgasms subsided, just holding each other, Booth cupping the back of her neck, caressing the base of her skull and the nape of her neck while Brennan still cradled his face to hers, her swollen lips continuing their sweet, gentle, unhurried assault on his while their bodies draped exhaustedly against one another._

_An orange glow caught Booth's attention unwillingly as it filtered through his closed eyelids, and he reluctantly pulled back to notice that the sun was just starting to peek through the window pane, signaling that more of their precious few hours together had dwindled away during the night, bringing them one step closer to goodbye._

"_You should get some sleep," he whispered against her lips with a sad smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly to match the narrow creases that had formed along his brow._

_Brennan pressed her lips together in a tight, thin line, shaking her head vehemently as her fingers played delicately across his cheeks like the keys of a piano before dragging his face back to hers for another kiss. He felt wetness against his cheeks as her tears were branded onto him while she opened her mouth hotly over his lips, barreling into his mouth with her demanding tongue, desperate for him to make her forget that sometime soon they'd have to leave not only his bed but also each other, with no guarantees of a happy reunion._

_He let her fill him with her presence, working out her aggressive denial on his mouth as she bit him, chewing on his lips before attacking his tongue with hers, stroking him faster and faster with her own, trying to stoke an equally violent response from him before sucking him into her mouth, letting her teeth rake across his taste buds as though she'd be able to permanently burn the flavor of him into her mouth._

_When he felt her shoulders start to shake against him with the force of her sobs and felt the angry, violent desperation in her kiss increase, he reached for her arms, gently putting some distance between them._

"_No," she growled, tears streaming silent and unacknowledged down her face, pushing back up against him, straining to reach his mouth with hers, but Booth gripped her arms tighter and pressed her into the mattress, holding his head just out of reach. She cried out in frustration, her eyes flashing dangerously at him before she snapped them shut and turned her head away from him, trying to smother her tears into his pillow._

"_Hey," he tried to soothe, but she just clenched her eyes tighter as tears slipped from the corners, refusing to allow him to turn her face back to his when he tried gently hooking a finger under her chin to guide her back to him. Instead of forcing her, he allowed her to turn from him for the moment, giving her that small privacy with her sorrow while he stroked her neck with his fingers softly, just a slow whisper over her skin while he tucked his face against the side of hers, pressing a sweet, lingering kiss to the hinge of her jaw. He nuzzled his nose into her hair, his breath tickling the shell of her ear as he hummed soothingly to her, hoping to calm that violent surge of emotions that she'd momentarily lost control of. He understood her pain; it was the same that clawed his insides with icy talons every time he allowed himself to dwell for too long. He knew how badly that hurt._

_Finally she stilled beneath him, her muscles relaxing as he hummed soft, wet kiss along her clavicle, up the side of her neck until he reached her jaw, discovering that she'd turned back to face him once again. Kissing her chin and then the corner of her mouth, Booth opened his eyes to find hers watching him, sparkling brighter for the tears they'd shed._

"_Are you okay?" he whispered against her cheek._

_She didn't answer. She didn't really know if she had an honest answer to give him, so instead she kissed him softly, reassuring him as best she could while she soothingly stroked her fingers through his hair, watching his eyes intently._

_Sighing tiredly, Booth shifted his body off of hers, settling onto his side next to her as she turned on her side to face him. Their legs seemed to entwine of the own accord, and Booth reached for her hand, slipping his fingers between hers as he brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss against her knuckles before tucking their hands between their chests. From across the span of their shared pillow, they watched each other silently, letting their eyes do all the talking between them. He dragged his thumb slowly back and forth across her knuckles as he started to drift off while she stayed awake longer, waiting for him to fall asleep before reaching up to brush her fingers across his cheek, watching his lips part slightly in his sleep. She sighed and dropped her head back onto the pillow, watching him until her tired vision blurred and her eyes would no longer stay open._


	5. More Than Yesterday

Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to review and read this story. I'm overwhelmed that so many people seem to be responding so passionately to what I'm trying to accomplish here, so I'm hoping this chapter is able to follow in the footsteps of what I've already done. The emotions here are a bit heavy so hopefully I was able to express them just right. This isn't meant to be pointless smut and fluff, there is a point to this writing exercise, and I'm trying to delve deeper into their emotional connection as they are finally able to learn more about their relationship through their newfound ability to reach each other, hopefully revealing something new between them every time they come together. Anyway, hope you all enjoy...

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_The next time Booth awoke, it was to the feel of her breath fanning his eyelashes, the soft warmth of her tucked reassuringly into the front of him where they still lay on their sides facing one another. Their fingers were still entwined between them, the back of his hand pressing against her gentle, quieted heartbeat, mirroring the way her own hand was flush against his chest. He vaguely remembered her shivering at some point during the early morning, waking him up just enough to groggily slide his other hand from her hip to drape over her back, dragging her sleeping form closer into the warmth he had to offer. In the frenzy of their desperation and the sole-mindedness of their lovemaking the night before, they had never found their way beneath the plush down comforter on his bed, in fact it had been shoved almost completely off the mattress, left to hang precariously off the edge of the bed near their feet. Glancing once again towards the window that had been pushed ajar by the volatile weather outside, Booth wondered that he was just now noticing the chill._

_He pushed his chest forward slightly, bowing his back, feeling the stiff muscles coil in a painful stranglehold about his spine as he tried to stretch the soreness from his body without disturbing the woman still wrapped tightly in his embrace. She must have sensed his suffering movement in her sleep because she cooed softly, her lips parting slightly with an even breath, her thigh moving gently up and down between his in an unconscious caress. Booth let his eyes sink shut in delicious surrender as he gave in to his soul's famished need for her touch, savoring the feel of her as his hand reached in wide, slow, sweeping circles across the expanse of her back, using his whole arm to soothe, to caress, to shelter. _

"_I'm cold," Brennan muttered sleepily as she tucked herself against him, aligning her body so that she didn't even have to lift her head from the pillow to press her mouth against his shoulder while she rocked her naked hips slightly against his, struggling to tunnel her body deeper into the radiating heat of him._

_Booth moaned deep in his throat at the sensual pressure of her against him, amazed at just how helpless she made him against his own body. "I could warm you up, Bones," he growled softly into her ear, letting his breath blow like a hot steam over delicate skin below her neck. He brought his fingers from her back to lightly trace over the curve of her jaw, trailing it down her pulse to smooth along her clavicle._

"_Mmm." She shivered against him, opening her lips against his shoulder, sponging the salty taste of cooled sweat from his skin with a slow swipe with her tongue. "The blanket would be great, thanks," she purred, hiding her grin against his flesh._

_With her eyes still closed, she dragged her mouth up the side of his neck, sucking on him gently as she found his pulse, letting it bead on the tip of her tongue. She felt the muscles pull ever so slightly under the skin of his throat and knew that his mouth had twisted up in a smile even as he sighed dramatically, his hand stilling for a moment against her back._

"_Very subtle, Bones," he complained, tipping his head back slightly as he silently urged her to continue her exploration of his throat even as he used his foot to hoist the comforter up within reach of his blindly searching hand, unable to open his eyes against the drugging effect of her hot mouth as she sucked on his Adam's apple, raking her tongue over his day-old scruff. Finally snagging the blanket with his fingers, he tugged the thick, heavy blanket up over their shoulders before slipping his hand up between her shoulder blades, pressing her hard against him with a quiet moan._

"_Oh god," he murmured, bringing his head down to drag his cheek across hers, burying his face into her hair as he tried desperately to cement the feel of her body against him into his sensory memory, hoping that not even a fleeting second would ever go by where he couldn't feel the tingle of her proximity so close to him. He felt the tickle of her nose brushing up his throat, inhaling his scent with a gentle sigh, and he just knew that she was attempting to do the same so he hugged her tighter, happy to make himself hers in any way he could._

_Booth let his hand slip down to cup the back of her thigh, holding her lower body to his hips as he rolled onto his back, bringing her weight to rest fully on top of his long, broad form. Lifting her head up, Brennan gazed down at the man below her with gentle contemplation, her hair falling forward to curtain around them, the long strands glowing like spun amber with the soft morning light filtering in through the window. She tucked her arms under her chest, her palms resting smoothly on his pectoral muscles as she stroked him with absentminded fingertips, her gaze flickering between the masculine features of his face as she studied him. Booth smiled faintly, fighting to keep the sadness that was churning heavily around his heart from bleeding into his eyes, hoping to protect her from tomorrow if only for a little while longer. Instead he settled himself below her, letting one hand drape over the small of her back, his thumb rubbing her spine in slow circles. He reached up to her with his other hand, his fingers tangling in her hair to push it back from her face, stroking her temple gently._

_Behind the sharp blue of her eyes, Booth could see all of the words she wanted, but was hesitant to say; her concern for the way things were, the strange familiarity of their current situation despite it being only recently developed, her struggle to reconcile the way their worlds had flipped topsy turvy in only a handful of hours, fighting against the knowledge that they would flip again in only a handful more. _

_He could read her easily, but for the first time, Booth had no words to comfort her heart, even if she didn't recognize that that was the organ that was distressing her. She might believe it was her mind that was suffocating with irrationalities, but he knew better, knew that the tension in her jaw and the visibly throbbing pulse along her delicate throat were speaking a language that she was only just beginning to understand._

_In the glaring, exposing light of the morning, everything looked different than it had last night when they had been veiled in dark shadows and gossamer moonlight, and he had convinced himself that it was their mutual, if never-whispered love that had brought them together. Suddenly Booth's own fears thought he saw just a flicker of panicked doubt flash through her eyes. Terror burst through him like a wildfire. Oh god, what had he done?_

_Booth cringed inwardly, dropping his gaze to her lips to escape her roving, searching eyes, the bitter taste of self-disgust rising like bile in the back of his throat as he guiltily realized that he was the cause of her internal struggle. Faced with what could be his final chance, his panicked, desperate need for her comfort, to finally know how it felt to make her his, if only just once, had pulled her unwittingly into a war of mind and heart, love and logic, fear and desire, and just when his actions had tossed her naked and vulnerable into the heat of battle, he was abandoning her to fend for herself. He had forced this change upon them, upon her, but she alone would be left to deal with the aftermath. And it was all his fault. He had been offered a few precious hours of what he wanted most… and selfishly he had taken them along with her body and her heart._

_He had finally persuaded her to open her heart to him… and now he was leaving her to bleed alone. How could he have so badly misinterpreted what was most likely just her simple desire to comfort him in the best way she knew how?_

_He was such a bastard. God, what a pathetic cliché, he thought sickeningly as he seethed with self-revulsion, hating that what had finally brought her into his bed were the last grains of the hourglass pouring away._

"_It shouldn't have been like this," he muttered to himself, shocking Brennan out of her own silent reflections. His eyes were fixated on the ceiling, unable to bring himself to look at her even as his arms clutched her tighter, his body fighting against his panicked mind that she belonged right there, pressed against him in a tender embrace. Her brow tensed in confusion, waiting for an explanation that he never intended to give._

_He should have waited, he thought, grinding his teeth as he struggled to stop himself from pummeling his fists into the mattress. Only for her sake did he succeed. If only he had waited until he came back, if he came back, then he could have offered her the forever he wanted so desperately to give her. Then she would understand that that was what he so badly wanted for them. But he couldn't do that now, not when the likelihood of his death hung tenuously like the sword of Damocles over any promise he would make. He should have waited, should have given, but instead he had taken from her… and he hated himself for it, hated that he felt like he had perverted his love for her into some desperate, last ditch effort._

"_What?" she asked with breathy disbelief, terrified that he was regretting this new closeness that had been unveiled between them because Brennan knew that for her, there was no going back. The data had been collected, the experiments measured, the conclusion drawn, and she knew that she wanted this, whatever it was. Could he not see that?_

_The future was filled with unpredictable variables, and at the end of her life, in those final, precious moments all that would matter to her before she slipped into oblivion were the memories that she had collected. And she wanted those memories to be of him, of them, and whatever this strange, wonderful thing was that bound them to each other. If this would be their only chance together, after so many other brushed-off opportunities, then so be it. She would etch every touch, every word and every breath into her memory, preserving "them" in whatever form they could exist._

"_Booth," she demanded, but he wouldn't look at her as her voice knifed through him, reminding him of her proximity, of what he had allowed himself to do to her. His crime. He was terrified that she would look into his eyes and think he had used her, even more frightened that on some deep, dark, selfish level that maybe he had. Could he somehow have rationalized his actions as a way to let her comfort him, rather than accepting the truth that in a pathetic moment of weakness he had taken his last opportunity to brand a memory of him, and only him, onto her heart, trying to make sure that she would never be able to love another without remembering that he had been first? He swallowed hard and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, ignoring the painful pressure in his skull._

"_What have I done?" he sobbed so quietly that she was sure his words weren't intended for her. For one heart-twisting moment, she thought he might want her to leave, that he might think she had taken advantage of his loneliness the night before. That she had misinterpreted and forced their friendship to a level he had never intended or wanted it to reach._

_But when his fists dropped from his eyes, Brennan saw the agonized grimace pass across Booth's face, his dark eyes brimming with troubled clouds, and she gripped his chin with her hand, forcing him to face her, suddenly understanding his despair with such clarity that it frightened her. But she had learned enough from him to recognize that look of guilty self-loathing that twisted his features. It was a look she had seen many times on the faces of the killers they had caught together, when their lies had been exposed, that moment when they were faced with the monster that the façade of their personality concealed. She knew that look, and she knew it didn't belong on Booth's honorable and gentle countenance._

"_Stop it," she said sharply, her hand tightly gripping his jaw. "Stop it, right now. You needed me, Booth. Just like I needed you. Don't drag guilt into this… please." Her pride couldn't seem to care that she was begging. He was frightening her, and she desperately needed him to be okay with this, with them._

_Booth shook his head against the pillow, uncertainty, wanting and self-doubt warring through him. He wondered what kind of a man it made him if he gave in to that desire and allowed himself to take the comfort and forgiveness she offered when he had no promise to offer her in return. What kind of a man was he for having already done so? His gut knotted violently. It was cruel of him to obligate her to his need and his desire at a time when he may never have the opportunity to give her all that he knew she deserved from him. But oh god how he wished he could be a selfish man._

"_I had no right to take from you, Bones. I never should have done that. Not when I can't promise…"_

"_You can't take what I don't willingly give you, Booth," she said, her anger at her own emotional inadequacies hardening her voice. "You haven't stolen anything that I don't want you to have, so just stop. Please. I can't watch you torture yourself for taking something that I wanted, and still want, to give you. It hurts me to watch you like this, Booth, so if you don't want to hurt me then just stop it."_

_Booth was silent for a long time, hot, angry tears slipping from the corners of his eyes, and for a moment Brennan was afraid she had been too harsh with him. He was hurting, he needed her comfort, but her gentle words just seemed to hurt him more. Brennan couldn't help but think that there was a reason she had always avoided this sort of heavy emotion, writing it off as irrational and unnecessary. But that just wasn't an option anymore, not when it involved this man, so she waited quietly, resuming her tender stroking of his chest to take some of the sting out of her words, unconcerned for her own tears rolling in wet, rebellious lines down her cheeks._

"_How did you know?" he asked eventually, his breath a choking, bitter whisper as he suddenly found himself filled with angry resentment that his weakness had let her read him so well, that she had dared to throw her perfect, seamless reason and patient understanding at his self-deprecation. He deserved to be loathed, hated for what he had done to his love, and if she wouldn't hate him for it, then he'd just have to punish himself enough for them both and then some._

_Finally his eyes connected with hers, daring her to answer him as his body trembled with hot, frothing and completely unexpected sick rage. It had hit him out of nowhere, blooming inside his chest with violent slashing claws, and suddenly he found it difficult not to scream, not to leap from the bed and slam his shaking fists through the nearest, hardest thing he could reach. He wanted it to hurt, wanted to bleed the anger from him one drop of crimson at a time._

_He had ruined them. She would never believe that these emotions could exist so strongly outside their uniquely despairing situation now; she would never understand that the intensity of his feelings for her were instigated by only her on even their most banal and mundane of days together. And he had only himself to blame._

_How could he have allowed himself to use her like that? He thought miserably, wondering how she could ever forgive him once she realized the true depths of what he had done, knowing that he didn't deserve her forgiveness in the slightest. He watched her stoically hardened features, fighting to keep his quickly fading anger at the forefront of his gaze while he silently choked on the utter dejection tearing at his insides._

_Surprising him in that just-so-Brennan-like way, she suddenly dropped her head, pressing her lips to his in a hard, swift, suffocating kiss. Booth was paralyzed with shock as she greedily sucked the breath from his lungs, coiling her tongue around his as she dragged him forcefully into her mouth, making him swallow the flavor of her kiss. His head spun, his thoughts blurring under the demand of her as she coerced another taste from him. Just when he started to respond against her assault, Brennan pulled back, untangling him from her lips. _

_Booth wanted to cry when she continued to pull away, shifting to hoist her upper body away from his as she leaned back to straddle his hips. Before she could move further away, terrified that it was goodbye that he had tasted in her kiss, Booth followed her up, catching her wrist and yanking her body back to him with frenzied, almost violent panic. Before either fully realized what had happened, they were both sitting up on the bed, Brennan's hips nestled intimately on his with her legs locked behind him. Booth had thrown his arms around her abdomen, crushing her to him with near-painful force as he tucked his head against her chest, her elevated position on his body bringing her heartbeat right to his ear._

"_No! Please don't leave, I'm sorry, don't leave me, I didn't mean to get angry, didn't mean to push you away but I did want and then I, I just… oh god, what have I done?" he cried against her chest, his shoulders heaving violently as he wept. How could he have thought to let her go, even for her own good? The panic that had avalanched through him when he felt her pull away had been like nothing he had ever felt before, and he knew then that he would never have survived if she had let him succeed._

"_Shhh," she cooed softly against he top of his head, clutching his trembling shoulders to her tightly as she struggled to soothe him. "I'm not leaving, I'm not going anywhere," she promised him quietly. She had never seen Booth so broken before, and she wondered that trust and love weren't the most dangerous emotions a person could feel if they had the power to reduce someone was strong and confident as Booth to such heart-wrenching despair. These were dangerous stakes indeed, she realized, as she clutched him to her, gently rocking him while she stroked her fingers across the nape of his neck as he quaked in her arms._

"_Booth," she murmured his name over and over again, pressing her lips against his ear while her hands roamed his back, trying to blanket herself around him as much as her smaller frame would allow. He was mumbling her name through his heavy, choking sobs, interlacing his quiet chanting with apologies that she barely understood and couldn't imagine how he had thought she needed._

"_What are we, Bones?" she heard him ask against her skin, his voice coming in soft, ragged, graveled breaths._

_For Booth's sake, she knew this was not a question they could afford for her to get wrong. Unable to read the answer from him, however, she fell back on the logic that had served her so well for so long._

"_We are us, Booth," she said simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, because to her, it was. "We're just a little more than we were yesterday, that's all."_

_Booth let out a final exhausted sigh, squeezing one last tear from his eyes before he pulled back slightly, just enough to tip his face up to look at hers. For a long moment neither moved, Brennan watching as the truth of her words swirled behind the dark earthy, sediment of his eyes while Booth searched for even the smallest hint of uncertainty in hers. Finding none, Booth slowly unlocked one arm from behind her back and reached to gently caress her face, swiping his thumb across her own tear-stained cheek. Tangling his hand in her hair, he pulled her lips down to meet his in a slow, gentle kiss, full of apology and remorse._

"_Please, Booth," she whispered against his lips, "no more about tomorrow. Let yesterday be done and tomorrow will be whatever it will. I want this, and I know you want this, so just for today, let us have today. No fears, no guilt, no regret, no future. Tomorrow is already coming fast enough as it is."_

_Booth kissed her again, letting a heavy, acquiescing sigh escape from him as she leaned up over him, curling her arms behind his neck as he fused their lips together in response. He buried his tongue inside the soft warmth of her mouth, so very grateful that she was there to save him from himself. She was right. Tomorrow was barreling down on them like the axeman's blade, and as guilty as he might feel later for dragging her into a mess that was of his making, he'd give her anything, and if this was what she honestly wanted, he'd happily pay the price to his conscience later so that he could give her today._

_Brennan purred against his tongue, thankful that the storm seemed to have passed between them but still wary that it might come thundering back at any moment. These emotions were still so new and unfamiliar to her otherwise empirical lexicon, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever know all the words she suspected he needed to hear from her. She groaned with pleasure as his thumb brushed the underside of her breast where she was pressed seamlessly to his naked torso, her eyes fluttering when she felt him harden where he was nestled intimately against the heat of her body._

_But she knew better than to rush this delicate new agreement between them. Those perilously frothing emotions that had threatened to boil over and steal the last precious hours between them were still too raw. She could feel it in the way he clung to her body just shy of too tight and the juxtaposing way his mouth moved slowly against hers, trying to hide his hesitation from her, as if he no longer trust himself with the strength of his passion, terrified to hurt her more than he believed he already had._

_Brennan pulled away gently with their next breath, cupping his face while she soothed him with soft little strokes of her fingers. He looked at her questioningly, and she realized then just how much and how violently he had scared himself, so much that he was silently begging her to lead them forward, wanting every action made between them to be her choice, her initiation._

"_Come on," she said softly, crawling off his lap and taking both of his large, encompassing hands in hers, drawing him up with her. If that was what he needed to be okay with them, with what was happening between them, then she would give that to him gladly._

_He didn't question her; he wasn't even curious about her intent, his face near collapsing with relief that when she had moved away, she had pulled him along with her. _

_Still clasping his hands in hers, Brennan walked slowly backwards, leading him into the private bathroom that joined to his bedroom, holding eye contact with him while she trusted him to guide her blind footsteps in the right direction. Pulling a hand away to twist on the shower faucet, she turned back to him as she stepped over the rim of the tub, gently tugging his unresisting form under the hot spray with her._

_Booth sighed in relief as the hot water hit him high across the chest, ducking his head slightly so that it soothed over his face, which still felt swollen and sore from the torrid surge of emotion that had poured from him only minutes before. His chest felt tight, the vice squeezing his heart having loosened just enough for him to draw a full, deep breath into his raw and ravaged lungs. Under the heat of the water, he felt her hand reach up to cradle his cheek, much the way she had the previous night, and he covered it with his own, pressing her closer as he gently nuzzled his face against her soft touch._

"_Thank you," he whispered as his eyes opened to look down at her, the blackness of his pupils glistening like polished onyx through the shimmering spray of the water._

"_You're welcome," she said, leaning up to press a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. "But really, the pleasure was all mine."_

_Booth couldn't fight the smile that spread across his face as she grinned up at him, and he chuckled softly, wrapping his arms around her as he hugged her close, resting his face against her wet hair while he pressed small, sweet kisses along the shell of her ear._

"_I'm sorry that this was the catalyst it took for us, Booth. But I don't regret this," she murmured into his chest, kissing him just above his drumming heartbeat. "I want this. I just needed you to know that."_

"_I know," he said sadly. "And you were right. Let's not waste anymore time than we have already." He pressed another kiss to the top of her head, hoping that his actions were telling her everything he was too afraid to voice._

_Reaching behind her for the shampoo bottle, Booth started massaging the soapy mixture into her scalp, pleased with himself as she tipped her head back into the strong pressure of his fingers, a soft growl vibrating through her exposed throat as her eyelids grew heavy. He trailed hot, slow kisses up the long column of her neck while he buried his busy fingers into the thick soapy tangles, wanting to make every caress just so very good for her. Returning the favor, Brennan took the bottle from the shelf and went to work on his own much shorter hair, lazily raking her nails across the back of his skull while the other massaged him just behind the temple. Booth groaned, lifting his lips from her throat to capture her mouth as he pulled her underneath the spray to rinse the suds from her hair before shifting to wash his own._

_Water sluiced over them as they took turns washing each other with sudsy hands, the scalding spray mixing deliciously with the heat of their own humming bodies, rivulets of crystalline beads clinging to their flesh like little rolling gemstones. They moved busily together, never settling, never pausing as they took advantage of this first chance to explore each other's bodies under the blatant, shadowless fluorescent light, relearning each other from this new point of view. Moans and heavy sighs filled the space between the pounding water as hands traveled and mouths followed, each sensation addictively better than the one before it. _

_And yet, a sweet innocence hung over them, their actions never leading them too close to that point of no return. This was about discovery, a fresh beginning for them both so for now a silent, unspoken agreement settled between them, that there would be time to feed their carnal lust for each other later. This was nothing that would lead towards an ending climax; neither were ready yet to handle any sort of conclusion between them, however gratifying or temporary. For now, they were happy just to bask each other's proximity, exploring this new ability to touch when and where they wanted, feeling liberated as the socially-embedded walls of platonic friendship were crumbled, freeing them to the openness that was reserved strictly for lovers._

_Booth was on his knees in front of her when the water turned cold, his teeth nibbling gently on the subtle jut of her hip bone while one large hand gripped her waist slightly higher up, the other dragging teasing fingers up and down the back of her thigh in a feather-light caress. Brennan sighed at the warmth his presence created in her, heat oozing through her veins before pooling in delicious, rolling waves in the pit of her stomach. She gripped one hand onto his strong, solid shoulder for support, her nails anchoring her to him as her vision become a bit hazy under the drugging effect of his teeth biting her, marking her in a way she never thought she'd welcome. Never had she been so glad to have been proven wrong. Her other hand fisted in his hair, urging him to bite harder so that the evidence of his closeness might last weeks instead of only days while her head was flung back on her shoulders, the spray pummeling against her flushed chest._

_When neither could take the near freezing water any longer, Booth hoisted himself to his feet, steadying himself with his hands on her hips before he shut off the spray and stepped out of the tub, pulling her along with him. Brennan was still as he patted the water from her skin with a soft, fluffy towel, a feeling of such utter contentment filling her that she wondered how she'd ever imagined herself satisfied before she knew what it was to experience this man. Her whole body quivered at just the thought of his touch anywhere on her, unable to understand how such gentle tenderness could live inside this man who was also capable of such strong and violent passion. She longed to collapse bonelessly into his embrace, melt into the heat he radiated, for once not caring at all about the irrationality of her desires._

_She didn't notice when he finished drying her body or when he carefully squeezed the excess water from her hair. And then he was wrapped around her again, tucking an arm under her knees as he caught her back, lifting her into his arms with seeming effortlessness. She chose not to point out his unnecessary and blatantly masculine need to display his physical prowess to her. He would just ignore her anyway, and she secretly loved the way she felt so small and feminine in his arms, not that she'd admit that to him out loud. For Booth, that small concession told him everything her feminist pride wouldn't allow her to verbalize._

_He carried her into the bedroom and set her down of the edge of the bed. Sinking to the floor in front of her, Booth sat back on his heels, careless of their nakedness as he folded his arms across her knees and rested his chin on his forearms, gazing up at her while he hummed softly._

"_I'm hungry."_

_Brennan smiled as she stroked his cheek, finding that she really enjoyed the sting of his unshaven face against her sensitive skin._

"_Of course you are," she said. Reaching down, she grabbed his boxers from the floor where they were still bunched up with yesterday's jeans and handed them to him. "You'll need these," she said, somewhat disappointed to lose this exhibitionist side of him only recently exposed. She had never imagined that Booth would be so comfortable in just his skin given his reluctance to even talk about anything sexual with her before, though she supposed that may be just another thing that had changed between them. It was a change for the better, if she had any say about it, suddenly wanting to know every little secret desire of his, ever fantasy ever gone unfulfilled until now, unable to think of a better way to show him that he was special to her, that she understood, at least on an instinctual level, what he meant when he had explained what it was to be different together with one person than with all the meaningless ones before them._

_Booth shot her a broad grin, misunderstanding the meaning for her contented smile. "I was thinking we could eat here instead of going out, Bones. I'd rather you not have to cover up completely, but I'll be damned if I'm letting you walk into The Diner like this. I'd hate to have to arrest you again… not to mention all the beatings I'd have to dish out to every guy in the place."_

_Brennan rolled her eyes but laughed anyway, thinking how good it was to see that silliness back in his dark eyes. "That's quite unnecessary, Booth. I was also going to suggest that we eat here."_

_He seemed confused for a moment, holding up the boxers questioningly. "Then what's with these? Didn't take you for a prude behind closed doors," he smirked._

"_I'm not a prude, Booth. And those are strictly for you benefit, not mine," she said, casually shrugging her shoulders._

"_How do you figure? Afraid you won't be able to keep yourself from attacking me in the kitchen?"_

"_Not at all. My self-control is exemplary," she said, even while a part of her knew that she would probably fail to particular test miserably as a mental picture of Booth flipping pancakes in all his natural glory filled her mind. "I'm more concerned for your well-being."_

"_Huh?"_

_The corner of her mouth twitched as she fought to contain her playful grin. "Grease burns are quite painful, Booth, and very dangerous. And knowing your love for unhealthy, greasy foods as I do, it'd be a shame for an unfortunate cooking accident to leave you out of commission," she said smoothly, her eyes trailing down his naked torso to his groin where she paused for a dramatic moment before sliding back up to meet his surprised stare._

_After a brief second, Booth let out a rumbling laugh and lifted himself from the floor as he crawled over her slightly reclining body, capturing her mouth in a swift, hard kiss. "Always looking out for me, aren't you, Bones?"_

_Brennan grinned against his mouth, kissing him back. "Well, I was really thinking of my own biological needs. You're well-being was merely a by-product."_

"_I thought you said the boxers were for _my_ benefit, not yours."_

"_I lied."_

_Booth growled, pinning her body to the mattress with his own as he sank his teeth into her bottom lip before thrusting his tongue into her mouth with demanding, rhythmic force, stroking her tongue hypnotically until she moaned helplessly beneath him, momentarily surrendering the battle to him as he bombarded her senses with his heady, erotic flavor. Recognizing the moment of his victory, he rewarded himself with a few more thrusts of his tongue, loving her response to his invasion in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with dominant male pride and everything to do with simply loving _her.

_Having gotten the submission he wanted from her, he relinquished her body and stood up, slipping on the boxers still clutched in his fist. He smiled broadly, masculine self-pride puffing his chest when he saw disappointment flash briefly in her aquamarine eyes, thinking of the color of sea foam as it frothed around the base of a steep cliff, that brilliant blue with just a subtle, oily shimmer of metallic green. _

_To tease her, he reached down for the jeans in a rumpled pile by his feet, but she stopped him, quickly snatching them from the floor and tossing them in the direction of the hamper. His smile widened._

"_You only get one article, Booth. Your ability to perform shouldn't be inhibited if you somehow manage to burn on your shin," Brennan said, standing up to walk around the bed to collect her own jeans from where they had been carelessly tossed in their scuffle the night before._

"_Uh uh, Bones," Booth crooned, holding up the lacy, low-cut panties he had found at the foot of the bed. "If I only get one, then you only get one piece of clothing too. Fair's fair after all…" he drawled, a wicked smirk cutting across his face._

_Cocking an eyebrow at him, the corner of her mouth perked up in a small smile. "You're right," she said, dropping the jeans back onto the floor. "That is only fair, I suppose." _

_She walked slowly back towards him, letting her naked hips sway just a little more than normal, and Booth swallowed hard, his grin peeling back from his teeth in anticipation. He was shocked when she brushed past him with little more than a passing glance, heading to straight to the bedroom door. Booth turned just in time to see her snatch one of his white button-down dress shirts from where it hung over the edge of the hamper, disappearing down the hall with shirt in-hand._

_Padding quickly down the hallway, Booth found her already digging through his refrigerator, the long white shirt having been slipped on over her body, hanging down to the middle of her thighs where it hid the whole of her nakedness from him. Turning around as she sensed his presence behind her, she was confronted with a bare-chested, boxer-covered Booth glaring accusingly at her while he scowled grumpily._

"_You're a damn tease, Bones," he complained, folding his arms across his chest._

"_You made the rules, Booth," she said, smiling at him with mocking sweetness. "You said 'one article of clothing.' You never said anything about us wearing matching outfits."_

_Advancing on her with predatory steps, he backed her up against the cool, smooth stainless steel of the refrigerator door, resting one hand beside her head as he leaned over her. Brennan saw that glint of his razor-edged passion darkening his eyes to that drowning, impossible blackness as he sought to regain control, and she was inwardly thrilled that she had been able to delicately manipulate his confidence back into him. He had been shaken before, she knew, his own self-doubts making him terrified that he had somehow bullied her submission to his advances from her, or worse, that it had been pity that brought her too him, but she needed him to see that couldn't be further from the truth. She couldn't let him be afraid to unleash the full strength of his passion to her, afraid that she was merely catering to his needs rather than responding to him with her own._

_She needed him to understand that neither their dwindling time left together nor her desire to comfort him had anything to do with her sheer, overwhelming physical and emotional need for his closeness. That raw, surging desire was spawned from something different entirely, something that she was beginning to suspect she knew the label for._

_Running her hands up the front of his chest to the back of his neck, she locked her fingers at his nape, pulling his mouth down to hers with a hard, urgent tug. She raised one leg high against his hip, wrapping it behind his own as she dragged his other hand up under her bent knee where his fingers curled obligingly around her calf muscle, taking the weight of her leg in his palm as he held her body open to him. The edge of his dress shirt pulled up over her raised thigh, somehow still managing to preserve her modesty despite the blatantly provocative nature of her inviting stance. _

"_I need you now," she gasped with quick, ragged breaths before he pushed his tongue back against hers, stealing her ability to speak while her urgent, shaking fingers fumbled with the waistband of his boxers._

_She managed to push the elastic down over his narrow hips where they slipped easily from him, and before they had even reached his knees, Booth surged forward, pinning her body against the metal refrigerator with the hardness of his body, his plundering tongue mirroring the hard thrusts of his hips between her thighs. Brennan bit back a groan as her body struggled to yield to him, the tight, grinding friction as he moved swiftly inside her telling her that maybe one more minute of foreplay would have been a good idea, but her mind screamed that this was exactly what she wanted, desperate to show him that even when his passion was at its most turbulent, rough, surprising and forceful, he still wasn't capable of hurting her. _

_She grunted as her back slammed against the metal door, her lungs struggling to keep up with his demanding pace. Booth froze, and she saw that panic spark momentarily in his black, feral gaze before she gripped his back, urging him back into movement._

"_Harder, Booth, oh god, please harder," she moaned, writhing her own hips as much as she could where he had her tightly pressed between a wall and a hard place._

"_I don't want to hurt you," he mumbled, dropping his forehead to her shoulder even as his grip under her knee increased and his hips pushed forward again, albeit a bit more carefully than before._

_She shook her head wildly, digging her nails into the firm, tensed flesh of his back. "You won't… can't," she promised. "Trust me with this, Booth. Trust me with you."_

_Crying out helplessly against her words and her pulsing body throbbing demandingly around his, Booth sank his teeth into her shoulder as he thrust again, the hurricane force of him driving her body higher up against the door until her foot had to strain to reach the floor. Still supporting her calf, he slipped his other hand around the back of her other thigh and lifted, all his muscles burning as he pounded his whole body forward into hers with everything he had._

_And for a moment, she forgot everything; the tantalizingly erotic caress of the thin, crisply starched material sliding and bunching between their bodies, the sticky dampness of her freshly washed hair as it clung to the sweat beading on her face and neck, the cold stainless steel door thumping hard against her back with every wild thrust. It all faded from her brain, and for a brief, beautiful moment, nothing existed except the feel of his body anchoring them together in carnal, romantic bliss._

"_Ahhh… har-harder," she begged, though she wasn't sure if she'd survive if he somehow managed to push into her any harder. Her entire body felt so tight, like her skin was tearing at invisible seams as he pushed her beyond her limit, trying to force himself into her space in the universe and prove once and for all that it _was_ possible for matter to coexist in the same place at the same time. Physics be damned, she thought desperately. Physics had nothing on this man as he forced her to see just a little bit of that "magic" he was always talking about._

_His arms let go of her to wrap around the hinges of the refrigerator doors, adding desperate leverage to his pistoning body while she hung onto his neck for dear life, the speed and force of his strong thrusts holding her smaller frame up off the floor. Suddenly terrified of the waning strength in her arms, she tried to lift her legs to lock around his waist, but the straining, rapidly depleting muscles wouldn't respond properly, and she was barely able to get them to curl around the backs of his legs._

_Booth was grunting and growling with each primal, invasive thrust, latching his mouth onto her earlobe, gnawing lightly on her soft flesh. Barely able to stand what he was doing to her senses, wondering deliciously if this kind of pleasure might actually be lethal, Brennan yanked back on his hair hard, catching his startled growl with her mouth as she screamed her ecstasy into him in vibrating waves as her body quaked and trembled uncontrollably against the delirium he unleashed inside her. Somewhere through the brilliant, white glowing eclipse of her climax, she heard Booth cry out, the heat of his release washing through her as they sank to the cool linoleum floor in boneless repletion._

_Somehow Booth managed to turn them so that his back was resting propped against the metal door, Brennan draped in an exhausted heap across his chest with their tangled legs stretched out in front of them, his boxers still wrapped rebelliously around one of his ankles. Almost of its own according, because honestly, Booth didn't think he'd ever have the strength to walk again, his arm was somehow soothing her with lazy, dragging passes over the material that now clung damply to her slender form. God, he wondered, how could he have ever thought that lovemaking between them could ever be anything but beautiful?_

"_You are so damn good, Bones," he mumbled sleepily, his eyelids growing heavy as he drugged himself with another intoxicating dose of her. "So fucking good."_

_Brennan smiled against his naked chest, her hand resting low on his abdomen as she innocently teased the soft hair just below his belly button. "You're just saying that to get into my pants," she sighed, smiling, pleased with herself as she distinctly remembered learning that particular colloquialism from Angela just earlier that week._

_Booth laughed loudly, caught off guard by her surprising, sarcastic accusation as well as that she'd even managed to get it out with jumbling any words._

"_I hate to break this to you, but you aren't wearing any pants," he chuckled, kissing the top of her head while he stroked her shoulder._

"_And you're always complaining that _I'm_ too literal," she huffed teasingly. "But my statement remains valid." She patted his stomach gently, relieved that they had found their way back to the light-hearted teasing and bickering that was at the center of their friendship. Apparently crossing that line wouldn't change everything between them, and she was glad. There were some things she wouldn't trade for anything in the world._

"_I'm still hungry, you know," he said accusingly._

_Lifting her head to look at him, she cocked an eyebrow at him while she waited for him to open his eyes. Sensing that she was watching him, Booth shrugged, his eyelids still drooping with exhaustion. "What? You really shouldn't have teased me like that, Bones. Just wasn't nice, knowing how hungry I was and doing it anyway."_

_Brennan rolled her eyes and shook her head, chuckling softly as she peeled her body from his, laughing harder when she saw the buttons of her shirt had pressed a line of little indentations into his flesh._

_She pecked his lips. "Fine, let's feed you before you waste away. You'll be of no use to me then."_


	6. Out of Reach

Sorry for the delay, had some problems getting the file to download for a while there. Okay, so this chapter is sort of a lead-in for the next two chapters that are going to be... intense, so get ready for those. But don't worry, this section may be drawing to a close, but I have sooo much more planned for these two than just Booth's departure. I'm still debating on whether I should give a little heads-up preview of what will be coming around the corner without giving too much away. Let me know what you would like better, the preview or the suspense. Believe me, I fully intend to utilize the adventure half of the genre as well as the romance so get ready for action.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_Brennan pulled herself up on shaky legs, smoothing her hands down the front of her now hopelessly wrinkled shirt, plucking it away from her body where their combined sweat had glued it to her flesh. Perching on a bar stool at the island end of the L-shaped counter, she vigorously rubbed her palms up and down the tops of her thighs, trying to massage some strength back into them. She was sore all over in the best possible way, weak and trembling as the remnants of their cooling passion sludged through her veins._

_Despite the desperately wanton violence of their animalistic coupling against the refrigerator door, she felt amazingly soothed, as if silken ribbon had replaced the blood cells gushing chaotically through her, trading clutter for the smoothest of caresses brushing her inside and out. A shiver rattled her spine as she centered on the tightness in her abused muscles, reliving how good he made her feel. The memory of his body within her own, touching her, reaching into her with fast, long strokes had her grinding her teeth against the throbbing demand of her body. A pleasure settled over her body that years of experience told her had nothing to do with post-coital bliss and although she was hesitant to speculate on its meaning, she knew that it originated with this man who was so very important to her._

_Booth reached up and grabbed the door handle of the refrigerator, using it to hoist himself to his feet. He hopped lightly on one foot while balancing himself against the door, struggling to get the loose leg of his boxers hooked over his toes._

_When he finally managed to slip the difficult material over his hips, he glanced up and was pleased to find her smiling at him, though her eyes were glazed and faraway, completely lost in what Booth was sure were complicated thoughts. Nothing was ever easy when it came to Bones, he thought to himself with his own small smile before he quickly corrected himself. Nothing was easy except wanting her. And he was quickly finding that the more difficult and bizarre and complicated she was, the more helpless he was to the strength of his concrete, steadfast desire to keep her in his life._

_But loving her… that was simultaneously easier and more difficult than anything he had ever undertaken. And Booth wasn't sure if he could bring himself to hurt her that way, no matter how much either of them might want it. It was too late to save himself, he knew; his heart had been given and received, even if she didn't see there, beating strongly in the palm of her hand, but her… maybe there was still a chance to spare her…_

_His bare feet padded softly on the checkered linoleum as he made his way towards her, brushing his hand over a few wayward strands of her damp hair. She blinked slowly, the glossy distraction fading from her eyes as she tilted her head up to him, finally noticing his close proximity. Her lips pulled up in a gentle, quiet smile that was just for him, and he bent to press to tender kiss against her temple. A contented sigh slipped between her lips as her eyes drifted closed. With a blind hand she reached up, stroking over the roughness on his face with the pads of her fingers._

"_Whatcha thinking so hard about?" he found himself asking, already guessing the answer, though he knew it could, and most likely would, lead them down dangerous avenues. He was prepared for this. Neither wanted to bring up that ticking clock and the restrictions it placed on this new aspect of "them" that they were only just now discovering, but Booth knew that they couldn't hide away for long. Eventually goodbye would find them, possibly for the last time and certainly much sooner than he could tolerate. He was so very tired of things being left unsaid between them under the pretense of maintaining the delicate balance of their unusual, emotionally-charged and vulnerable relationship. _

_And yet… Those crushing words he longed to confess were stuck in the back of his throat, barbed spines rooting deeper with ever failed attempt to tell her what his soul desperately needed her to know. He had agreed to give her today, that was all that was left in his power to give, and if these were their last hours, he'd sell his conscience to make her happy while he could. But he'd foolishly stood by for years and watched their chance at forever fade away before he'd even known what he had done. And now he would never be able to live with himself if he selfishly asked for her love when he was only moments away from breaking her heart._

_Forcing a smile that he couldn't will himself to feel, he kissed her forehead and swallowed the tears that he wouldn't allow to fall on her. He'd burdened her enough already, though in the deepest reaches of him he couldn't regret all that they'd finally managed to be to one another, even if only for a day._

_Brennan sighed again as he kissed the shell of her ear._

"_You make me feel strange, Booth," she said, her eyes still closed as her hand fell lower, smoothing over the warm muscle of his chest._

"_I hope that's a good thing," he murmured against her hair. Standing back up, he pulled her close, drawing her into a loose hug with lazy arms._

_She nodded against his chest, draping her arms around the small of his back. "Yes. I feel good, satisfied, although it feels different from the way I normally do after gratifying my sexual urges."_

_Booth smiled softly. No matter what else was happening between them, she was still just so-very Bones. "You know, Bones, you really don't have to tell me everything about your previous escapades. In fact, my alpha male pride would prefer it if you didn't," he said lightly._

"_Booth, you know that I've had sex prior to last night. So have you, so why would it bother you—"_

"_I know, Bones," he said, rolling his eyes, still smiling though she couldn't see it with her face tucked against him. He shrugged his shoulders. "And it doesn't bother me. Give me some credit here, but that still doesn't mean I want to hear about the details."_

_Now it was Brennan's turn to roll her eyes. "I wasn't going to go into detail, Booth. I was simply trying to say that I feel different when I am with you, although I don't know how to quantify what it is that is different."_

"_Not everything can be measured, you know," he said, running his fingertip up the ridges of her spine through the cotton barrier as he sensed the danger in his words._

_She shivered and pressed a kiss against his chest, reveling in how smooth and hot and hard he felt against her. "So I've learned… it's just that sometimes I think it would be easier if those things didn't exist," she mumbled against his skin, part of her hoping that maybe he wouldn't hear that last quiet confession, struggling to rationalize something that was knocking the fight right out of her with a strong left hook from nowhere._

_Booth pulled back so that he could look down at her, unable to resist running a hand over her hair. "So let me get this straight. You know something, but you don't have the textbook definition or scientific evidence to back up your conclusion."_

_Brennan could tell by his tight smile that he was teasing her. Narrowing her eyes up at him, she said, "I suppose that is one way to describe the situation, yes."_

"_You just feel it?" He wasn't even trying to fight the broad grin that broke across his face now. It got wider when she didn't answer him, refusing to fuel his teasing. He laughed proudly._

"_That," he said, gently poking the tip of her nose with his finger, "is your gut talking to you."_

_She shook her head. "Booth, organs do not speak. We have been over this many times."_

"_Whatever you say, Bones," he said, chuckling. Then he grew quiet while he stroked his hands up and down her back with a bit more vigor. "Let me ask you something," he whispered into her hair earnestly. "How do you feel right now, right this second?"_

"_Aroused," she answered flatly._

_Booth laughed softly and shook his head. "Dig a little deeper, Bones. Is that all?"_

_It was so very selfish of him… but he needed this if he was ever going to breathe again._

_Brennan was quiet for a moment, struggling to categorize and label the emotions flooding through her body, each one triggering minute physiological responses that allowed her to roadmap her current state. Her elevated pulse rate, flushed skin as her blood flow increased and dilated pupils, which she suspected given her unusual sensitivity to the kitchen light, all suggested heightened sexual arousal despite her recent orgasmic release. Her brain was awash with dopamine and serotonin, flooding that delectable pleasure center insider her skull and making her feel light and content, all the sensations that when combined were generally accepted markers of one emotion: happiness._

_Booth was watching her closely, trying to anticipate all those textbook terms that he knew were swirling around inside her head as she dissected her current emotional state. Slowing his hands as they drifted up and down her back, he soothed her as best he could with gentle, reassuring strokes. He wouldn't lead her though, as he fervently hoped she wouldn't fully understand. But Booth was sure that he could neither live nor die a contented man until he knew for sure._

_Finally she looked up at him and said carefully, "I feel… good."_

_Booth nodded, dropping his arms from her body and taking two delicate steps away from her, putting deliberate space between them. She looked up at him questioningly, a brief look of alarm flashing across her face. Had she answered him wrong? Was he offended by her response?_

_Booth noticed her distress and smiled softly. "How do you feel now, Bones? This very second."_

_Brennan quirked her head, trying to ascertain what he expected from her. "I don't understand."_

_He sighed and shook his head gently, struggling against the urge to reach out and touch her. She looked so lost, so confused, and he was so very relieved that a cruel spark of enlightenment didn't flared inside her eyes. He hated that he needed this from her, hated that he was risking this pain to her heart. He wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until she was smiling once again, but he hesitated. He couldn't explain to her what he meant. If he did then she would see what he was covertly trying to pry from her. If there was love there and she didn't already recognize it for what it was… and he forced her to see it… he didn't think he could strike a more painful blow. _

_Booth clenched his jaw, sinking his teeth into the wet flesh of his inner cheek until the sweet taste of metal filled his mouth. Fucking asshole, he growled to himself silently, for years you lecture her about love and now, more than anything in the world, you want her to fall for a dead man. But fuck, oh did that dark, selfish little part of his soul scream for just that. It didn't seem to matter how much the rest of his conscience hated himself for it._

_She had already given him more than he ever would have dared to hope for before they had begun to explore this physical facet of their relationship, the insistence as she begged him while they desperately made love during the night to take all of her, every part of her that she could give had rocked him like a solid blow to the stomach. Why couldn't that be enough for him? She had been so soft, so willing, so pliant beneath him as she pleaded for him to accept all of her, offering everything to him, but what could a woman who denied the validity of love and soul have meant when she said "everything"? He knew what he had given her, that sliver of his soul glittering back at him from the cool, iridescent blue fire of her, but what had she given him in return?_

_Oh god, you'll burn for this, he thought. And oh did he deserve to._

"_It's easy, Bones. Just tell me how you feel right now."_

_She pursed her lips, slowly gnawing on the inside of her bottom lip while she struggled to find an honest answer that would satisfy them both. Emotion recognition wasn't her forte, but she knew enough about Booth to see the agony he was trying to hide from her._

_Her body still felt flushed with the heat of increased blood pressure at his presence, still felt that delicious tender swelling between her legs that she was quickly starting to associate with every little thing that reminded her of this man and what he was capable of doing to her senses. Even the subtle, crisp smell of his cologne that was impregnated on the stolen shirt she wore was making it difficult for her to think, heightening her physical desire for him with frustrating distraction. Even their distance now was doing nothing to quell her thirst for him._

_But there was a hollow feeling in her chest that hadn't been there before when he'd had his body tucked in close against hers in a soft, innocent embrace. She felt a chill she didn't understand, a coldness that had nothing to do with the birthing winter storm that was hesitantly rattling the windowpanes above the sink._

_Booth could see her struggling. "Just this once, Bones, ignore the irrationality of whatever you want to say. Just…" he trailed off. It didn't feel right to lead her any farther than he already had._

_Brennan dropped her gaze the floor, startled to find herself embarrassed by the emotions to which she was tentative to admit. "I don't feel quite as good," she said slowly, dragging the words forcefully from the pit of her stomach. "I feel… lonely?" Her eyes turned up to him questioningly, unsure of her own response. Was that the word she wanted? Rushing on she added hurriedly, "No," she denied, shaking her head adamantly. "That is ridiculous because you are standing right there, even if you are no longer touching me, and I—"_

_With one long stride, Booth grabbed her shoulders and yanked her to him, dropping his mouth to hers before she could even steady her trembling legs beneath her. Startled by his swiftness, she gripped his biceps helplessly, her fingers plucking weakly at his smooth, tensed muscles in vain effort to anchor herself to something solid while she sank into his towering, volcanic form. He leaned over her, pulling her warm, unresisting body flush against his while his fingers clenched around her shoulders in fierce desperation to keep her there always._

_Their mouths were parted before they ever met, hungry for another taste before their lips were even sealed together. She flicked the tip of his tongue with her own, encouraging him to chase her, and she was still surprised that she enjoyed the fluttering apprehension of allowing him to be predator to her prey. She found she wanted so badly to be hunted and captured under the skillful weight of his strength, her desire spiking parallel to her fear before he tore into her so that she knew for certain she could never be anyone's but his. He obliged with a approving growl, pushing into her mouth with the secret urge to taste the confession she hadn't even known she'd made._

_Instinctively his lower body pressed forward, wedging his hardening, boxer-wrapped erection against the heat of her belly, as he couldn't resist giving her a gentle, rocking thrust with his hips. Her feet slipped farther apart on the linoleum as she fought to rise up to better accommodate him. He molded his chest to hers, sliding up and down against her slightly so that the shirt between them heated with their grinding friction, wanting nothing more than to bury himself inside of her and the love he now knew she felt for him._

_She moaned when the ledge of the countertop dug into her back, but as she started to recline her body over it so that he could cover her with his, Booth pulled back, his fingers flexing under the tight grip he still had on her shoulders. He panted heavily, dropping his head to press a soft, gentle kiss into the hollow of her throat, causing her to moan with burgeoning desire. Her eyelids drooped and her head rolled back on her shoulders while she clung to him weakly._

"_Booth… " she groaned._

_Another soft peck met her cheek, his breath so very hot against her already-heated skin. "Come on, Bones. Let's eat," he murmured, his voice grinding over her like a wave of gravel._

"_Mmm… god, yes," she panted, though more to the shivers wracking her fragile spine than to him._

_The sound of clattering metal caused her eyes to snap open. She was alone, the sweat already chilling on her flushed and rosy skin as her back sagged heavily against the counter, and somehow Booth was standing in front of the stove nearby. He'd pulled a frying pan from a lower cupboard and was flicking on the gas range to preheat the Teflon-glossed, black metal. She frowned when he had the nerve to toss her a casual smile over his shoulder while he worked._

"_What do ya wanna eat? Still technically breakfast time so I was thinking eggs and sausage… oooh and bacon," he said, and although he appeared to be fighting for casual, Brennan could still hear a hint of that delicious gravel._

"_Booth, what are you doing?" she asked, unable to disguise the indignance or the arousal in her voice._

_He stopped in front of her on the way to refrigerator, dropping a soft kiss on her pursed lips, giving her barely enough time to respond before he withdrew again. "I gotta keep up my strength, Bones. You wouldn't want me to die from overexertion, would you?"_

"_But you… we…"_

"_Trust me, Bones. Indulge me in this, and I'll indulge you," he said heavily. "Promise." He growled against her lips, giving a quick nip to her bottom lip before he turned away from her, desperate to bury his dejection and guilt under the fog of their mutual lust before she saw it. He'd promised her one day, and he was determined to keep his promise even if it condemned him to hell._

_After a few deep breaths, Brennan pushed herself off the counter. "But Booth—"_

"_We have time," he interjected softly, turning from the refrigerator with an armful of various packages, pushing the door closed with the heel of his foot. He held her gaze with gentle, sad eyes, trying to tell her without words that he was just as confused about all of this as he knew she was._

_Brennan frowned slightly, but choked down her rebuttal, struggling to resign herself to whatever the next few hours had in store for them because apparently neither of them were in control here._

_They didn't have time. She knew that. She knew he did too. Both were painfully aware of the ticking minute hand that had chased them through the night and into the morning, driving every movement of their frenzied lovemaking forward while slipping away unnoticed in their wasted but unavoidable moments sleeping. Briefly she couldn't help but wonder if Booth was irrationally trying to make more time by pretending they had plenty to spare. Knowing the way his romantic brain worked after all their years and debates together, it certainly sounded like something he might convince himself was possible, though she admitted that irrational hypotheticals were not her specialty._

_Her frown deepened, worriedly gnawing on her inner cheek as she fervently hoped that her efforts to give him what he appeared to need, to follow his lead into this new thing between them were not going to backfire under his direction._

_Booth heard her sigh as he returned to the stove and pulled a chopping board from a nearby drawer so that he could start dicing the vegetables for the omelets he had decided to make upon discovering that he actually had fresh vegetables in the frig. He didn't look at her. He wasn't ready to face her yet, or what he could now see so clearly inside those blue, blue eyes of hers. He wasn't ready to face the guilt of her love… or admit how much it soothed him to finally recognize it there. The only thing he could admit was that he loved her, and he hadn't decided yet just how much it would hurt her to hear him say it._

_She stood next to him while he worked silently, only communicating through the continuous soft caress of her fingers lightly roving up and down his bicep while he shifted around, seemingly focused on his task. Brennan stood next to him in front of the range, a step behind him while she stared vacantly straight ahead, seeing nothing._

_Booth tried to keep his mind focused on what he was doing but it proved more difficult than he anticipated. His eyes watched as the cooking yolks paled from marigold to buttercup, all the while his only thought was for the woman behind him, trying to stop himself from whipping around and taking her right there on the counter, spilling himself into her before their food was even done. While she may not have understood the result she had proved during his little experiment, something was certainly happening inside her brain, something she obviously felt but couldn't label because she refused to break total contact with him now even while he worked. They didn't speak, didn't even make eye contact once where he stared blankly at their food while her eyes glazed over, blinded by her deliberating. He could feel her eyes behind him, simultaneously watching him but not, feeling her empty stare as it raised gooseflesh on his naked back. He shook his head slightly as he decided that irony had just become his least favorite sort of cosmic humor._

_They needed time and space from each other to firmly grasp these emotions that had been snatched off the backburner and thrust into the hottest white center of the fire where they were left to burn unattended. The prior they were out of and as for the latter… well, neither were even willing to consider. And what Booth found the most bizarre was that they were only together now because they were being forced apart tomorrow._

_Never once in his fantastical imaginings of "them" over the years did he ever once think that he wouldn't know the right thing to do if she ever came to him offering what only she could give him._

_Fuck. He couldn't think of anything else to say._

"_Would you do something for me?" he asked her suddenly as he grabbed a plate and used a fork to slide the finished omelet from the pan. He needed to distract her before she ended up being too smart for her own good._

"_Of course." She was walking her fingers up the ridges of his spine. It was distracting. They needed distance. He didn't stop her. He couldn't._

_Using a spatula, Booth scooped a small mountain of bacon and sausage onto the plate as well before he turned off the burners. He motioned for her to go sit at the island again, and he followed her, putting the hot plate between them as he dropped into the seat next to her and handed her a fork. She took it from him and began digging into the omelet, mostly ignoring but not complaining about the meat garnishing her otherwise vegetarian breakfast._

_Booth watched her for a moment before he grabbed a crispy piece of bacon and chewed on it slowly while he savored the sight of her eating a breakfast he'd made for her, in his apartment, his kitchen… wearing nothing but his unwashed shirt._

"_What?" she asked with a small, self-conscious smile when she noticed his fixated staring._

"_You're not going to ask me what I want you to do for me?"_

_She shrugged. "Nothing you said hinted at a follow-up line of questioning. You simply asked if I would do something for you; to which I answered in the affirmative. I assumed you were being hypothetical when you didn't continue."_

_Booth quirked an eyebrow at her. "So, hypothetically speaking, you would agree to anything I asked of you?"_

"_Within the limitations of scientific possibility, of course, but yes, I believe I would. I know that you would not ask me to do anything illegal or unethical because of the type of man you are, so anything beyond that I see no reason to deny if you thought it important enough to ask of me."_

_He smiled at her and leaned over to kiss her lips._

"_Besides," she said with a tight smile against his mouth, "it's not like I've said 'no' to you lately. And I haven't regretted that. In fact, I find that I rather like saying 'yes' to you." Booth wasn't the only one trying to distract his lover for their own good._

_Booth chuckled and kissed her again before returning to the sausage patty still speared on the end of his fork. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, struggling against all of the lewd and oh-so delicious things that her words had brought to his mind. She really wasn't making this easy on him._

"_I didn't think anyone would ever be able to coerce you into doing something, Bones."_

"_A request is not coercion, Booth. You ask, and I make the decision to comply. There is no extortion or force involved. I do what I want, and if that happens to mean honoring your request then there you have it."_

_Booth held her eyes for a moment before returning to his breakfast, seeking a moment of privacy in his meal. Those eyes of hers saw too damn much, whether her brain recognized and interpreted the information they gathered correctly or not. The information was still stored in there somewhere, waiting to be understood at what were usually the most inopportune times._

_After a moment he set down the fork and sighed._

"_Would you come with me to Arlington today?" he asked quietly. It was disheartening to keep reminding them of what lay ahead, but there were some things that Booth just couldn't let go, even at the cost of keeping them content in their fatal denial._

_Brennan placed her hand over his where he was gripping the counter ledge, stroking his whitening knuckles with her thumb._

"_Going to talk to ghosts?" she asked gently, remembering all of their many visits to cemeteries together and how important things like that were to him even if they made no sense to her. There were far too many of those memories for her liking, but better that they went together than one going to visit the other, she supposed._

"_Something like that, Bones." He looked at her, his eyes softening as his darker thoughts melted under her contact. "Something like that."_


	7. What Tears Them Apart

Sorry if anyone got two alerts for just one chapter, there were a few glitches that needed fixing so hopefully the site is running a little smoother now. The next chapter should be up soon though.

Ok, here we go. For those of you that are interested in a little preview, here's just a few tidbits of the fun that's around the corner. I'm gonna be pretty ambiguous here though cause I just can't stand to give too much of the game away. So... soon we will jump back to the present where Booth and Brennan are currently separated. Booth is on a very dangerous, highly secret mission for the US government and Brennan will cope with things the best way she knows how, with a dig in South America, but things will not go so well for either of these heroes. For those of you who can't bear the separation, don't worry, there WILL be a reuniting moment... though I promise it won't be easy for either of them. With that said, enjoy the countdown to Booth's departure, it'll all be worth it, I promise.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

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_They finished their breakfast in relative silence, neither sure where the cloud of awkwardness that currently fogged their pathetic attempts at conversation had come from. Neither could decide what was more unsettling, the heavy silence or the mumbled and forced fragments of small talk that just weren't them. Both were suffocating with the same desire to comfort and desperate need to be comforted, but instead of swimming to the surface for air, they both stubbornly clung to the bottom, each willing to drown rather than blink before the other, never knowing that the other was waiting for exactly the same._

_Brennan's eyes concentrated on the food before her, soothed somewhat by the repetitive but reliable constant of fork leaving plate, leaving mouth and back again. Silence had never been her enemy, quite the opposite, in fact. Simultaneously burdened and gifted with a mind that never stopped reaching for answers to questions most people would spend a lifetime never asking, silence was one of her only reprieves. Though her brain never paused for so much as a breath, at least in quiet solitude she could tunnel-vision her focus without suffering the extra effort of struggling to multitask the universe at the same time._

_And yet, despite the magnitude of her everyday thoughts, Brennan saw the world in simple terms. Things were either true or not, fact or fiction, only one of which held any merit. There was no gray level of halfway in her thinking. Facts had long ago proved to her that the world existed in black and white, and gray was merely an illusion that occurred when there was an overabundance of those black and white facts mixing too closely together. Rather than blending them into confusing shades of slate and charcoal and everything in between, existence was just a checker-boarded Rubik's cube waiting to be organized by careful, rational deliberation._

_Conclusion reached, appropriate action determined, direction attained. Yes, Brennan saw the world in simple terms._

_She saw no need for hesitation when it was triggered by something so evanescent as human emotion. Logic governed the world in which she lived and the decisions that she made; inconsistencies were annoyances that she couldn't understand why other people clung to so desperately, as if they somehow found comfort in irrationality as long as they had been the one to manufacture it. This puzzled Brennan. Though she wasn't terribly fond of metaphor, surely concrete provided safer and more reassuring footing than quicksand, which changed quickly in the most unstable and lethal of ways at the slightest shift in pressure._

_Brennan was always comforted by the solidity of facts that would never waver on her or change if she dared to turn her focus elsewhere. The irrational human desire to base decision and action on ephemeral emotions was a curious and frustrating equation she didn't think she would ever be able to solve, much to her chagrin. To her, it seemed just as senseless as shooting in the dark._

_But, as much as it piqued her, Brennan was not immune to human emotion, and she was constantly struggling to reconcile her instinctually irrational behavior with the consistencies that her devotion to hard science provided her. Booth, particularly this new, intimate proximity to him, was doing little to relieve her distressing struggle to compartmentalize. The tunnel walls of her focus were crumbling down around her, however, under the seismic vibrations of Booth's nearly tangible agitation._

_Booth did not handle silence well. It haunted him, brought him to the edge of panic, and she suspected that she knew why even if she didn't necessarily empathize. Instead she sympathized with him, felt sorrow for the pain she saw in him even if she didn't understand his way of dealing with things that were better left forgotten. Without even looking at him, she could feel his ache for motion pulsing in the air, the desperate urge to move, careless of direction, brimming over them both as he fidgeted in his seat._

_Booth did not compartmentalize, or at least, not in the deliberate ways in which Brennan was so adept. Booth trusted those inconsistencies that his emotions, however volatile, flung at him. Feeling was as real to him as fact, maybe even more so, when confident knowledge appeared mysteriously from nowhere to lead him down a path he couldn't see but knew existed._

_A soldier only survived as long as his instincts never failed him, he knew._

_He tapped his heel on the foot rung of the bar stool, his knee bouncing erratically though unnoticed as he averted his eyes and shoveled mouthfuls of suddenly bland food down his throat. It might as well have been soot for all the enjoyment he got from it. His appetite had abandoned him, but he continued to soldier on if only to keep his fingers from drumming on the countertop in time with the agitated jostling of his leg._

_She sighed quietly, and his eyes flickered quickly to her face before falling away again._

"_I fancy a quick shower before we go," he mumbled through a mouthful of omelet, knowing that his desperate attempt to fill the heavy silence would fail before he even spoke. For a split second, images of them, sweaty and pulsing against the refrigerator door crackled through his brain._

_Brennan said nothing, meeting his eyes only briefly but with frightening intensity before she went back to methodically attacking her meal._

_He intended to shower alone, to give them each a few moments to try to wade through the emotional deluge that rolled chokingly between them. The last piece of conscience that he had left hoped that she would save herself from him, that seconds of solitude would be enough to force her to turn from him the way he selfishly couldn't bring himself to do to her. It would hurt, but she'd be better for it in the end, better off never realizing all that he'd somehow stolen from her in a frenzied night of hopeless desperation and bruised trust. Maybe then at least she would only have to hate him for a little while instead of forever, he thought. Some of her memories of him could be fond ones; she would be able to be happy again if she left him now, maybe even with someone else since she was not at all incapable of love as she liked to believe. It would kill him, but at least she'd be safe then. Safe from him._

_Swallowing hard as he choked down one last mouthful of tasteless grit, Booth slid off the barstool and walked to the sink, his carelessly dropped fork clattering loudly through the resounding silence. He paused for a moment to rest his palms on the ledge of the countertop, leaning heavily on his arms as his head hung forward and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. That sound of a door slamming permanently was echoing inside his head again as he silently willed her to leave, struggling against the urge to vomit violently into the sink as he trembled ever so slightly._

_Her hand on his shoulder startled him, and he turned to look down at her, the brown in his eyes sinking to burn in the oily, inky black well of his miserable anger. He let it bubble over onto her, scorching her with his fury so that she wouldn't see the love he had buried there while he tried to kill the sympathetic offering he now saw in hers. Why wouldn't she just take the out he was giving her before it was too late? He couldn't help the anger that burned a line of fire up his throat and threatened a cruelty he'd never imagined himself capable of._

_He would never relinquish the love he felt for her. That was his to keep now, now that it had finally been acknowledged, if not spoken, and he would never let it out of his grasp again. He would bury it, deep down in the farthest, darkest corners of his soul where no one else would ever find it. That was his alone. His prize, his punishment… an eternal reminder of what he could have given but instead was forced to suffer its burden alone because of the silence he'd stupidly chosen to keep for far too long._

_There had always been a next day, he thought bitterly. It's never too late until suddenly… it is._

_He had to hide it deep, to rip something inside himself to conceal it just in case she ever decided to go looking for it._

_And her love…_

_No matter how much he wanted it, how greatly he now depended on her love to survive, he couldn't accept what she was trying to give him; he wasn't even sure how much she realized she had bared to him. There was no trade to be done, nothing that he could give that wouldn't cause her pain._

_He had promised her, sworn that he would never betray her. And he was a miserable man of his word._

_Brennan studied his face silently, her lips pulled into a tight, contemplative line. Those dark, marbled eyes of his that growled feral danger were fixed hard upon her face, unblinking, unwavering and wholly unforgiving. His body had gone rigid under her gentle touch, his body fairly vibrating with a rage that he didn't know where to direct. It poured from him in aimless waves, desperately seeking a target before he drowned in those hot, churning emotions that battered him relentlessly. His jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring like a wild, cornered beast as the muscles in his neck stuck out in steel cords._

_He was angry, that much was obvious, maybe even at her though Brennan couldn't imagine what she had done to provoke him to this. It seemed that her Booth mind-reading abilities were tapped out for the time being because she was clueless to what had sparked the blatant rage she could clearly see staring back at her. One minute he would barely look at her, and now he was glaring so hard that even her logical brain could sense the near-tangible evidence of it._

_His heart had, once again, left her shooting in the dark._

_She reached up, confused by but unafraid of his anger even if his focus seemed to have landed on her. Instead she gently cupped his face, running her thumb across the bunched lines on his brow before stroking her fingers down over his cheek, watching the shimmer that reflected in his eyes as he struggled not to blink._

_He didn't pull away, and that was enough for her. Given the piercing tightness in her chest, she wasn't entirely sure she'd survive if he did._

_Capturing his face with both her hands, she leaned up to press a soft kiss upon the hard line of his mouth. His hands came up to capture hers, covering them with his heated palms as he gently pulled his face from her grasp. His eyebrows pulled in questioningly and he cocked his head, but Brennan dropped her gaze and released her hands from his. As he went to drop his arms to his sides in defeat, she caught one and entwined her fingers with his before she turned away, pulling him along behind her as she guided them both back to his bedroom._

_Booth trailed behind her, confused when she pulled him back into the bathroom and dropped his shirt from off her shoulders as she freed her hand from his in a single graceful motion. She twisted on the faucet and stepped over the rim of the tub for the second time that morning, though this time she left him standing alone next to the sink, mystified and deservingly hurt by her refusal to look at him. He watched her through the fogged glass of the sliding shower door as she leaned back under the spray to wet her hair, sure that this voyeuristic moment would have embarrassed him if he had still had the ability to feel anything so mundanely pathetic._

_He shifted his weight back and forth awkwardly for a minute before he hesitantly stepped into the tub with her, uncomfortably aware of how alone he suddenly felt despite her silent invitation to join her. She was facing the spray, the hot water beating against her chest as she ran her fingers through her soapy hair. The wrongness of the situation hit Booth hard in his twisting, sickened stomach, like he was invading a space that he had no right to venture into, that he was somehow going to injure her with his very presence there in a moment that should have been close and intimate and was anything but._

_When he stepped into the shower behind her, Brennan quietly let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. She needed him there, needed him to follow her through this maze they were running circles through because without him, she knew she'd be lost in the dark forever. She was desperate to feel his presence there, solid at her back, utterly trusting that he'd catch her if she slipped in this unfamiliar territory._

_But he didn't reach for her. He never touched her the way she was aching for him to. Their skin was careful never to brush in so much as an accidental caress of random chance as they maneuvered around each other in the tight space, neither having the courage to bring their eyes to the other, together and vulnerable and so bitterly alone despite their confines. She could feel him there behind her, just as strong and unmoving as the space he'd deliberately put between them, a space she didn't know how or if she should even try to cross. _

_He must want it there, she thought sadly, wondering if maybe she was actually hurting him with her pathetically inadequate attempts to give him some amount of comfort. Maybe she had been wrong to loosen the reins on her own desires during her efforts to help him._

_She'd asked too much of him, she realized, when she'd so blatantly demanded that he take everything she had to give him. Her eyes scrunched tightly shut when she remembered how she'd pleaded, begging him to accept what she wanted to give, and being the sweet, caring man he was, he had been unable to refuse though he should have. She'd put too much on him, asked for more than was fair of her to when he already had so much more to worry about._

_She was always asking for too much of him, she thought. He was one man, with troubles and nightmares of his own, and yet he was always there for her, selflessly taking on her pains right alongside her without her even realizing that she had been spared the entire burden because he was bearing his own share of what should have fallen wholly on her. Her one chance to comfort him, to bear his burden with him, and instead she was tormenting him, forcing him to hide from her in a way that he never had, and that knowledge felt like it was tearing through the soft tissue inside her chest._

_He was standing right behind her, and she was alone again. Right where she deserved to be._

_Leaning forward, she let the hot spray strike her face, burning away the clandestine tears that snuck down her cheeks in perfect camouflage under the force of the shower, biting her lip against the stillness of him behind her. The man who never stilled, never rested, who blurred through the universe in a flurry of color the way theoretical contemplation sped through her brain… was so frozen that she could barely feel his physical proximity there as he withdrew from her in every other way._

_She bit her lip to stifle a wayward sob, running her hands over her face under the guise of wiping away the soapy remnants of shampoo from her eyes. The spray on her face felt cold against the burning of her puffy, sensitive cheeks, and she clenched her jaw and swallowed hard, relieved that she was facing away from him so that he wouldn't be able to see her cry. He was a good man, always so unwaveringly kind to her. He'd immediately want to comfort her, to help her, and she desperately didn't want that._

_Without turning around, Brennan slid the shower door open so that she could step out without ever having to face him. She snatched a towel and wrapped it quickly around herself before she disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Booth paralyzed where he stood just out of reach of the spray._

_She had been careful, but he had seen the ever so slight tremble in her almost hunched shoulders as she'd fought the urge to curl protectively into herself. He'd seen her hands move to cover her face and didn't believe for a moment that soap had anything to do with it. He had frozen, staring intently at her naked back as she tried to hide her tears from him, dying to reach out and brushing his fingers up her spine in a loving, gentle caress but unable to find the strength to lift his arm from where it hung leadenly at his side._

_When she pushed open the door and fled, clearly desperate to get away from him, Booth choked out a huffing gasp before sinking to the floor, resting his shoulders against the cold tile and bringing his knees up to his chest, locking his arms around them in a lonely embrace. He let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes, swallowing hard against the painful lump of self-disgust that was lodged in his throat. Tears burned wet scars down his face while the spray pummeled his shins and forearms, and Booth could only wish for it to hurt and bleed from him the wretchedness he felt darkening his heart and coiling around the throat of his soul._

_He wondered if this is what happened when the spirit died but the body was too stubborn or stupid to anything but soldier on, pretending there was still some speck of life left inside._

_The silence was louder and more grating than the chaotic thunder of the shower spray crashing against the wet tile and Booth's own hard flesh. It battered his knees, but all he could think about was the deafening quiet now that Brennan had left, and he leaned forward to rest his forehead against his legs, tunneling his fingers through his short hair and tightening to fists, pulling until the pain in his skull had a whole new wave of tears spilling from him._

_When he finally had no more left to shed, his eyes feeling so dry and brittle that they threatened to shatter with every scraping pass of his eyelids, Booth crawled forward to shut the water off and slowly drew himself up. He didn't bother with a towel, preferring to let the droplets that clung to him continue their gravitational journey down his chilling body._

_He was shocked to see Brennan sitting quietly at the foot of his bed when he stepped into the room. Her back was still to him, her legs hanging off the mattress as she stared down at the hands folded in her lap. She must have gathered her strewn clothing from the living room while she'd been alone because she was wearing the dark jeans and navy sweater from the night before, and Booth could almost pretend for a moment that it was still that night and he'd never done what he had to break them. But the darker shade of her wet hair betrayed his fantasy, and the way she wouldn't look at him proved that the break was there and sharp and maybe permanent and entirely his fault._

_Booth's eyes darted around nervously, suddenly self-conscious of his nakedness now that she was dressed and refusing to look at him. The irony of his embarrassment was not lost on him, and he morosely wondered how much more pathetic he could get before the day was over._

_He moved around the room, quickly gathering clothes from his dresser and pulling them on in a flurry of shame and bitter confusion, but he needn't have hurried because Brennan never moved even though she had to be hearing him fumble about behind her. Several times he paused and opened his mouth to say something to her, anything just so that she might reward him with the glittering blue of her gaze, but each time he couldn't draw the breath to form the words that his selfish heart was screaming mutely at her from behind its cage of bone and bloody meat._

_When he had dressed himself in simple ripped jeans and a black wool sweater, Booth walked hesitantly to stand next to her, brushing her bicep with two fingers while he stared at his sneakers. If she didn't want to look at him, then he would try his best to oblige her. He didn't blame her. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to bear his own reflection now either._

"_Are you coming?" he asked softly. He wasn't sure which answer terrified him more._

_She took a deep breath at his touch, but didn't lift her gaze from her hands where they rested in her lap. Her fingers flexed slightly and curled into fists; she didn't trust herself not to touch him, not to read more into this delicate olive branch that he was offering her no matter how much she was sure that 'just partners' would never be enough for her anymore. But if that was the one way to keep him in her life, then she'd take it willingly and hope that she would have the strength not to burden him again with her want of him. _

_She only hoped that she could learn to comfort him in the way he needed and not the way she wanted. That would be for another to give, she realized. Hers was a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear to listen, but not needful or wanton arms to encompass nor soft lips to caress. Those gifts would be left to another, someone who had not asked for too much already._

"_Of course. If you want me there," she said quietly._

_Booth swallowed and closed his eyes against the hurt that was so accusingly evident in her voice. "Yeah, Bones, I want you there." I want you with me, he silently added. God have mercy on him, but he couldn't deny that he wanted that more than he wanted his next heartbeat._

_Brennan nodded, almost imperceptibly, and stood up, walking quickly from the room before she gave in to the urge to reach for one of his large hands with her own. Booth followed, pausing only long enough to grab his leather coat out of the hall closet and wrestle his arms into the sleeves before following her through the open apartment door that she'd left in her wake._

_He took the stairs two and three at a time, and he couldn't help feeling like he was chasing after her despite knowing that he'd been the one to hurtfully and purposely drive her away. How cruel was he to follow after everything that he'd done?_

_When he finally caught up with her, he saw that she had pulled open the passenger side door of her car where she had parked it next to his the previous night and was reaching into the backseat for something. He cocked his head when she crawled out and stood up, holding a black pea coat in her hand, and noticing him standing behind her, she shrugged somewhat defensively._

"_I prefer not to wear bulky winter coats while driving because they inhibit the necessary movements," she said quickly, turning to walk the long way around the back of the Tahoe just so that she wouldn't be forced to brush passed him on the way to the SUV. She didn't think she'd be able to resist reaching unfairly for him with that much of his heat so tantalizingly close to her even for a passing second._

_She opened the door and slid into the seat just as Booth pulled open the driver's side, and despite herself, Brennan's eyes flickered to his for no more than the length of a single neuron firing before she turned to resolutely stare out the side window, unable to see anything past her mind's eye's memory of his cold, hardened face. Guilt swept through her, hating that she was the reason this warm and open-hearted man was now so stoically guarded, terrified that she had ruined something so very rare and precious as a genuinely kind and honest human being._

_They didn't speak during the long ride to the cemetery, both certain that anything they might attempt could only ever be the wrong thing to say. Booth concentrated on the glistening wet asphalt as it disappeared beneath the fender, his fingers flexing tightly around the steering wheel as if he would gain some measure of satisfaction from choking the hard, synthetic plastic to death with his whitening knuckles. Brennan used one hand to prop up her chin as she stared vacantly out the passenger window, wedging her other hand under her thigh so that she didn't forget and accidentally brush his hand where it usually rested on the center console, too focused to realized that both of his were glued to the wheel and there was nothing there to reach for._

_Words rolled through his head and died on his tongue, making him feel sick as they decomposed inside his mouth before he could breathe them into life. His jaw wouldn't work, wouldn't open, wouldn't let him risk hurting her again. So he thought the words he couldn't make himself speak harder, shouting them inside his brain and hoping that if he could scream them loud enough, maybe she'd be able to hear him through the barrier of that thick skull of his._

_At a stoplight, Booth snuck a surreptitious glance across the stifling, claustrophobic distance that separated her from him, guiltily thinking that if they'd been driving her smaller compact there would have been an excuse to shrink the space between them. His fingers itched and he swallowed hard when he thought about reaching for her hand for just that small bit of relief. Then he noticed that she'd buried her hand under her thigh, deliberately protecting herself from the risk of his touching her. Hurting her again. Booth sucked in a breath and turned his head sharply back to the road, his eyes pinching shut at the pain that suddenly lanced through the center of his chest, angry, accusing claws scraping viciously at the inside of his sternum with hard precision._

_Neither were particularly aware when Booth brought the vehicle to a stop, and they both exited the unnoticed warmth of the heated cab for the bitter chill of the blistering winter wind. The snowfall had been light that January, a dusting of soft white crystals that was just enough to brighten the earth in a gentle sheen of pale frost, but not enough to prevent tufts of the obstinate, darker grasses from poking out from underneath with beckoning fingers._

_The sky, too, had succumbed to the winter frost, losing its usual warmer colors to the pale gray and hardened shadows that appeared like something out of an old black and white photograph, still and quiet against a backdrop of swirling white flakes that gave the scene its only mocking hint of life. Snow continued to float down to earth, pushed and bullied by the occasional gust of angry wind as they settled lightly upon the travelers disturbing the otherwise calm and silent graveyard._

_They walked slowly through the endless maze of white stone and broken lives, Brennan lagging slightly behind Booth as he led the way, and she was happy for the excuse to follow him, giving her the opportunity to let her gaze drift meticulously over the strong breadth of his back as it shifted with his movements under the leather coat he wore. This was how she would survive this, she thought, sneaking glances here and there when she chanced upon an innocent moment to do so, fueling her memories of them together in a way that wouldn't impose upon him or their partnership. She wouldn't take from him anymore, she promised herself, and maybe eventually he'd forgive her moment of weakness and her unforgivably misinterpreted and misguided attempt to help him._

_Eventually Booth came to a stop in front of a slab of stone that looked like all the rest save for the name scratched deep into its surface._

"_I always come here before a mission," Booth said quietly, his eyes never leaving the grave at his feet because if they did, he knew he'd lose the words he was struggling so hard to string together, though he wasn't sure where the hell they were coming from._

_Brennan stopped just short of his side, peering up at the profile of his hardened face, noticing the pull of his brow and the occasional tick of the muscle along the hinge of his jaw. She took a breath and stuffed her hands into her pockets, following his gaze to the stone before them._

"_Not always to this grave, of course," he continued. "When I first joined the service, there was no one here for me to visit, no one I knew anyway, but I still found myself here the night before my first deployment. I just wandered around for hours, reading the names and dates and wondering how long it had been since they'd been visited by somebody they knew. Wondering if anyone was out there still missing them despite the years gone by._

"_The second time I came here, I had names to find. Two men who I'd served with but who hadn't made it back the way I had. One was older. He'd been in for eight years and was on his last mission before his term was up. He was a quiet sort of guy, real fatherly, knew what he was doing and tried to make sure us younger guys did too. Most of us were still too green to know fuck all about what we'd signed up for, but combat has a way to making figure stuff out fast, you know._

"_The other guy was a year younger than me but a real brainiac, bookworm type, easily on his way to making the officer program if we hadn't been ambushed just two miles from the drop point. None of us saw it coming and he was already gone before we figured out where the hell they were even hitting us from._

"_That's when I realized there was no failsafe to being a soldier. It didn't matter how many years you had behind you or how many bullets you'd already dodged or what you planned to do when you got home. None of that was gonna stop that one piece of lead that was just gonna end it all for ya before you even knew it."_

_Booth paused and tried to swallow the dryness that was brittling his tongue, closing his eyes when he couldn't stop the tears from rolling traitorously over his cheekbones, embarrassed that it wasn't the cold that had his fists shaking where he had shoved them in his pockets. Without thinking, Brennan brought her hand to rest gently on his shoulder. She froze for a moment when she realized what she'd done, but she didn't withdraw her touch when he sighed out a breath in a hot, white puff of air._

"_It seemed like every time I came back there were more and more buddies to visit until finally it took hours just to make the rounds to them all."_

_He nodded down to the grave that rested so quietly at their feet._

"_This is Teddy Parker," he choked out, and Brennan immediately recognized the name as the one he had brought her to visit after he had been kidnapped by the Gravedigger. She rubbed her hand gently up and down his back, knowing that there was more than one memory here that Booth was struggling with._

"_He was just a kid, and I'd had years of experience by that time."_

_Brennan shook her head slowly. "Booth, you told me that his death wasn't your fault. You know that."_

"_No," Booth shook head. "It wasn't my fault. But he was still a kid, still far too fucking young to be in a hole in the ground. Fuck he'd never even told the girl he was with that he loved her," he growled as his throat closed up._

_He spun on his heels and hastily walked away, desperate to put distance between his memories and his stupidly flapping mouth before he gave in to temptation and said something he shouldn't. He ran his fingers through his hair before rubbing a hand over his face, angry and confused beyond hope by the warring between his head and his gut, his heart the bleeding collateral damage of a situation he had no idea how to control._

_Brennan trailed after him, terrified of crowding him if he wanted space but unwilling to let him get too far away just in case she wasn't part of what he was actually running from. He didn't stop moving, his long strides covering ground so quickly that he might as well have broken into a run as he tried to focus only on the crunching of the frozen grass beneath his heels as he fled from he-didn't-know-what to he-didn't-know-where. She was jogging to keep up with him, her shallower strides having difficulty keeping up with his swift and deadly retreat._

_After half a mile and many sharp, biting gasps of harsh winter air into sensitive lungs, Booth dropped heavily onto a bench at the edge of a structured pathway and hung his head forward as he caught his breath. Brennan, several feet behind him, approached hesitantly, hovering uncertainly until he glanced at her and nodded faintly for her to sit down next to him._

_She sank onto the bench slowly, rubbing her palms over her thighs where they were starting to itch slightly from the bitter cold and the tight denim. Rubbing her hands vigorously together, she puffed hot, moist breaths into her cupped fists in an effort to warm her slowly numbing fingers. Booth glanced over at her and, with a sparking thought, rummaged through the inner pockets of his coat, pleased to find a balled up pair of black, stretchy cotton gloves that he often carried for Parker, and he handed them over to her, smiling gently at her when she took them gratefully and slipped them on._

"_Thank you," she said quietly, almost as if she was afraid of his reaction to her voice._

_He sighed ruefully and let his head fall back on his shoulders as he slouched on the bench, rolling his head to face her so that he could cast her a sad, apologetic smile. She smiled back carefully, her eyes glittering brightly through the cold and restrained moisture._

_Booth sighed again as he turned to stare skyward, sensing the movement of her body as Brennan shifted to copy his slouching, weighted posture and followed his gaze into the dark and cloudy sky. It was still early, no later than midday despite blackening heavens as they changed from opaque and ashy gray to a darker, more sinister shade of charcoal, storm clouds gathering threateningly as the snow fell heavier, landing on them in big, wet flakes._

_His eyes drifted shut, momentarily lulled by the dancing, swirling snowfall. If only all chaos could be so beautiful._

"_I used to do this as a child," Brennan breathed quietly in a hushed confession._

"_What?" he queried gently, opening his eyes and turning to face her._

_She was leaning back against the bench, her head rolled back and her eyes opened wide to the sky above her, and Booth couldn't help but notice the long, alabaster lines of her graceful neck or the sculpted pucker of her smoothly sharp cheekbones. Her skin, so pale and soft, begging for him to reach out examine its perfection with a rough and calloused fingertip. Her eyes shone faintly and flittered in her upward gaze, and Booth could just imagine her trying to catalogue the unique singularity of every passing snowflake._

"_When I was a child, I used to sneak out late at night whenever it snowed. Even though it was wet and cold, I would climb up onto the hood of my parents' station wagon and just lie there for hours, watching the snowflakes as they fell," she revealed quietly into the air, her eyes never leaving the darkened sky._

"_That's when the universe always seemed the most real to me in a practical sort of way. The snow falls, seemingly from the dark mystery of outer space, though that isn't actually true, but when you're just staring into it, it's almost like it materializes from nowhere. You can't see the origin, but that doesn't really matter. It just floats down, so very peaceful."_

_Booth watched her, mesmerized by the grace of her lips as she unknowingly let slip just another part of her for him to fall in love with. He was struck by the awe in her voice, so very surprising coming from this woman who seemed to understand the actual mechanics of reality better than he thought it was fair for any mortal to know. He had always thought that all of that science had stolen her ability to recognize the magic that slipped through the barriers of everyday life, lost or ignored by most because they didn't know how to look for it._

_In all the time he had known her, he had thought it was his duty to try to show her that magic that existed outside the parameters of her inclusive and stifling scientific logic, but now he could see just how wrong he had been. He hadn't needed to show her anything; she saw that wonder that existed, understood it better than he would ever be able. She had never been a stranger to awe-inspiring magic in any form it took, she just described it in ways that he wasn't capable of understanding._

_This woman who denied the relevance of love, the most beautiful little piece of magic that the universe had gifted to mankind, had been written off by so many as emotionally cold and hyper-rational, but what most saw as an unexplainable miracle, she understood in terms of neuron activity and chemical transference. That didn't make the effect any less true, he realized, for the first time understanding that they had been saying the same things to each other all along, just speaking different languages to get there, leaving so much lost in translation along the way._

_Where others labeled chaos, she understood the patterns and reasoning that was beyond lost to the simpletons she tried to explain herself to. Somehow she understood things that he wondered briefly if human beings were ever even supposed to know._

_What a fool he'd been, he thought, to ever have thought she needed him to explain the magic of the universe to her._

_After a long, pregnant pause, Brennan turned her head to look at him, finding that Booth was gazing intently at her from just a few inches away. Her cheeks heated under his scrutiny, but she didn't look away, staring searchingly into those soft, brown depths as he looked through her and into her, as if he was seeing every facet of her being just beyond the crystal blue of her eyes._

_His face was so serious but gentle, those hardened, guarded lines having smoothed from his brow, leaving her with the Booth she knew so well. She thought about her life before him, the people who had ventured into and out of her life while she simultaneously passed through theirs. The more people she remembered, both past lovers and friends, the more lonely she began to feel until she pulled herself from her silent reverie and sought the man who was sitting so still beside her._

_It occurred to her that she trusted him in a way she never had another person. She remembered a time when she'd been suffocating, buried alive beneath thousands of pounds of earth, but she'd known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was going to find her. Whether or not it was before their oxygen ran out held little importance to her; all that had mattered was that he was coming. Of that, she had been sure._

_She also trusted him over the chaotic chance of a random universe and the inevitability of human error and failing. Thinking back to what it had been like to have sharpened blades slamming into a board only inches away from her body, she'd never flinched, never blinked despite it being a natural, instinctual response. In even the most basic, primal levels of her brain, she had known that he wouldn't miss. Chance and statistical probability didn't matter. Human imperfection didn't matter. Booth wouldn't miss. And she'd believed that unflinchingly._

_And she'd been right._

_In spite of herself, Brennan reached up and cupped his face, drawing his eyes out of their fog and back to hers, and she suddenly felt so pleasantly warm with his gaze upon her. But she didn't miss the tension that settled back into him at her touch, though thinking back to the words he'd spoken over the gravestone earlier, she wondered if maybe…_

"_Booth," she whispered, dragging her thumb slowly across his cheekbone. Please don't let me be wrong, she pleaded silently into the universe._

_He looked at her, turning his head slightly deeper into her soft caress, unable to resist the warmth of her hand or the delicate brush of her slender fingers. His eyes had darkened back to that near-black polish, showing her so many things even as he desperately tried to hide from her._

_He looked haunted, and Brennan knew agony when she saw it. She'd seen it many times in her own reflection over the years, far too many not to recognize it in his even if she didn't fully understand the cause or the wound behind it._

"_Would you feel better if I told you I loved you?" she breathed, desperate to heal the pain she saw in him and make him feel as good as he made her feel._

_Booth sucked in a sharp breath and snapped his head forward, pitching his body over his knees._

"_No," he hissed. _

_He wouldn't be able to bear it, he knew. It was killing him to hide his love from her, suffocating under the weight of what he wanted so desperately to give her, but he couldn't. He couldn't be that cruel. Not to her._

_Don't let me hurt you that way, he silently begged her as he hung his head between his knees, breathing heavily as he swallowed the bile the gurgled in the back of his throat, his fingers digging painfully into his eyes as if he could dam the tears that threatened maliciously._

"_Booth, I'm sorry," she stammered as she scrambled off the bench, backing away from him and shaking her head violently as she pressed a hand to her chest to contain the painful hammering of her despairing heartbeat._

"_I, I'm so sorry, Booth, I didn't mean, I didn't want to… I'm sorry, please, I, I didn't…"_

_She turned and ran before he lifted his head, unable to bring herself to see the fresh wounds she had left on him with her foolish words. How could she have been so stupid? After everything she'd done, every mistake she'd made in their last precious moments together before he had to leave, he'd still wanted her around. He'd brought her here to share something so personal with her, to share something so intimate with someone so cut-off and ignorant of the proper social guidelines, someone who had already taken more from him than she'd ever had any right to._

_And what had she done? She had taken the one belief she knew meant more to him than any other and hurt him with it._

"_Fuck," she cried as she reached the main road after several long minutes. Hurrying along the sidewalk until she spotted a taxi, she jogged across the street and climbed into the backseat._

_What the hell had she done?_

_Booth's head shot up when he heard the crunching grass as she ran from him and how he'd hurt her. He could only watch as her form got smaller and eventually disappeared behind a line of trees, and he jumped to his feet, instinctively moving to go after her when he stopped himself, trying to reassuring himself that they were better off this way, that she was better off this way._

_These wounds would heal, he told himself, unlike the scars he'd inflict if he had begged her to stay with him. But the gravity of what had happened struck him with such force that he collapsed onto the bench as his knees buckled, and this time he couldn't fight the urge to vomit._

_She was gone. He had gotten what he wanted. And now all he wanted was to die so that the pain would stop._

_What had he done? But for the first time in those past two days, he knew. He had gotten what he wanted. Twofold. After years of standing on the other side of the revolving door of people in her life, he had been the one to earn her love. And now he had succeeded in protecting her from his betrayal of her trust… by throwing her love back in her face. The center must hold, and he'd shattered them._

_What the hell had he done?_

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As always, your comments and reviews are just so greatly appreciated. This stuff can be painful to write so I'm so glad that people are enjoying my efforts. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read and respond.


	8. Brings Them Back

Ok, so basically my work schedule just went crazy, really limiting my off time to work on this story. But never fear, I'll be updating it just as regularly as I am now because I've been using my lunch breaks to write instead of eat. So thank you to all of you who've alerted / reviewed this story, I really appreciate it... seriously, finding a new review alert in my email has become like my own little xmas lol... sad as that may be lol. So please keep reading and reviewing so that I know I'm not starving myself for nothing lol. PS - don't hate me for the ending of this chapter... stick with me and I PROMISE you won't be disappointed. And now... on with the show...

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

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_Booth ran. A blur of white frost and shadow sped by as his legs pumped and his lungs burned with the sharp, dry air that speared into his chest and sliced through his blood as he urged the world to flee past him faster. With every loud, pulsing thump against his ribs his pace quickened, driving him forward over the crunch of snow and the whistling cry of the bitter wind as he abandoned it back to its solitude._

_He burned, deceitfully telling himself that the wetness dripping from his face was sweat and melting snow as the flakes crashed onto the deadly heat of his skin._

_Find her. Find Bones. Make this right. Fix this mess you've made you stupid son of a bitch! _

_He would have roared if there'd been any air inside his lungs, slamming his legs harder into the frozen, condemning earth, launching his body forward against the shrieking protests of every fired muscle. It was like running through a nightmare, where the harder he pushed, the more he struggled, the more sluggish his limbs became until the useless molasses of his body faltered and he failed under the weight of himself as it crushed down around him._

_Eventually the grass changed to gravel and then finally to pavement as he found his way out of that labyrinth of death and sacrifice and tragically beautiful polished stone. Regret fed through his veins like acid, corrosive and degrading, and for the first time it was not doubt, but instead absolute, undeniable certainty that the death that had happened, there in that sad place of lost lives, was entirely his fault._

_And so he ran. Before hell ever had a chance to find him, he would burn for what he'd done._

_As he hit the parking lot, he didn't slow. He zigzagged through the cars that were scattered here and there, unconcerned that he had emerged as a madman before the few other people that littered the area. He vaguely registered the wary or deprecating glares as he flew by, but he could not scrounge up the guilt that he knew he should feel for violating what was meant to be a peaceful, sacred place. It seemed like such a lesser crime when he had so much more for which to hate himself. None of that mattered to him, nothing would ever be sacred again for as long as he could still see her face in that moment when he had murdered his love._

_Forever had never seemed so unbearable._

_The asphalt was slick under his heels, and he skidded and bumped into cars and trucks as he rushed through lot in search of the Tahoe. Where the fuck had he parked? He couldn't move fast enough, every other vehicle a maddening obstacle that stood between him and a goal he didn't quite know how to achieve._

_The only thing that mattered… the only thing he knew, was motion._

"_Fuck," he snarled under his breath, slamming hard into a minivan as he lost his footing on a patch of ice._

_He recovered quickly, scrambling to get his feet back under him and moving together in one direction. His palms slapped against cold metal as he launched himself off the van, lurching forward into an empty row._

"_Faster goddammit," he puffed, his panting breaths forming hot, moist clouds of wet vapor in front of his face._

_His heels clicked sharply, his fists pounding violently through the air as he sped forward between the narrow, winding passages, only one thought sizzling through his brainwaves in his frenzy: find Bones, take away that pain he'd caused. He couldn't bear what he'd done, regardless of the intention._

_Anything, his mind screamed. I'll do fucking anything, whatever it takes. To hell with my soul. All that matters is healing hers._

_Booth spotted the government-issue, black SUV at the end of a long aisle and couldn't contain the growl that rumbled inside his chest. Fucking FBI and their fucking cookie-cutter standards. Why the hell didn't he drive something neon green like his ties or electric blue like his damn socks so that he'd be able to find the fucking thing when he needed to?_

_His hip and shoulder bumped into the door as he skidded to a halt and he dug frantically through his jacket pockets for the keys._

"_Where the hell—"_

_Nothing. His desperately searching fingers came up empty, though he continued to rummage through the pockets of his jeans and his jacket as if they would materialize if he just humored the devil and checked enough times for something that was clearly lost. Fuck, fuck! He sank his teeth into his tongue to keep from freeing those raging flames that smoldered inside him. They must have fallen out when he slipped, or while he was running, or when his heaving stomach had flung him off that goddamn bench. He wasn't sure; it didn't matter._

"_Screw it," he growled._

_Whipping off his jacket, he bunched it in his fist and slammed his arm through the driver's side window. There was no hesitation, no flinching as the glass shattered under the force of his vehement desperation. His knuckles throbbing beneath their leather coating, but rage made him fluid and brash. Carelessly, he reached in and punched the lock so that he could rip the door open._

_It would just be fate's twisted sense of irony if he'd broken any bones._

_He'd had precious few occasions to practice hotwiring a vehicle, but the times in combat when things hadn't gone according to plan had taught him that there really was no such thing as a worthless skill when presented with the right opportunity. So there were things he'd learned, things a good man probably shouldn't know, but now that he didn't have to worry about falling into that category, he was grateful for some of his more disreputable talents._

_He hastily swiped the shards of broken glass from the seat after he had managed to coax the engine to life with a dull roar and climbed in, slamming the door shut angrily behind him. In the panicked blur that was his brain, it never occurred to him how the scene must have appeared to anybody happening to walk by at the time._

_Booth flipped on the siren as he pulled out onto the main road, running every red light and stop sign that dared to try inhibiting his forward momentum. He wasn't about to slow down now. Not when he had fucked everything up so very badly._

_The dashboard glared 1:17 in the ugliest shade of lit green lettering he'd ever seen, taunting him with the limited time he had to fix what he had done. If there even was a way to fix them after this._

_He didn't see how there could be, his crime being what it was. But, for her sake, he prayed there was a way._

"_Oh god, please," he choked. His hands drummed on the wheel, his legs shaky so hard that his whole body vibrated._

_The clock ticked over one more traitorous minute. He barely resisted the urge to pull his gun from the center console and shoot the dashboard just to stop its damning glare._

_He kept seeing her face flash through his mind, the humiliated grief flooding her eyes and streaming in cruel torrents down her cheeks, staining her beauty with his harsh and marring words. That face, those striking eyes that glowed with the soft, immortal brush of blue flame that made him realize that he burned in hell every time he wasn't lost inside them. It all hung there through the haze of self-hatred and bitter disappointment, torturing him into an agony he knew he deserved a hundredfold._

_Her car was still parked in the lot next to his apartment building as he drove past. His head snapped to attention, and he stood on the brakes with both feet. The Tahoe squealed and screeched under duress as he tried to throw it into park before it had even completely stopped, and he threw open the door and bailed out into the street, leaving the engine running and the siren flashing accusingly in the middle of the road._

_Before he even realized, he was inside the building, taking the stairs three at a time and gripping the spare hide-a-key that he didn't remember picking up so tightly that the metal bit into his flesh, the teeth lacerating his palm._

"_Bones!" he yelled. Fuck the neighbors. "Bones!"_

_When he finally reached the door, it was locked, but logic wasn't exactly with him at the moment as he burst into the apartment where she clearly wasn't. His eyes glanced over the couch where she'd first touched him that night, first begged him to touch her, that moment when he'd lost his soul completely and irrevocably._

_The room was dark, all the lights turned off and the emptiness that swept through the desolate, quiet stillness of the apartment suddenly pulled his mind back to the graveyard and everything that it meant to make your home in such a place. No happiness, no life, no movement… no hope. _

_He sucked in desperately painful, wheezing breaths as he struggled not to hyperventilate, staggering down the hall to futilely inspect the bedroom where there was nothing but more broken memories of better times to greet him. He caught himself at the foot of the bed, his eyes raking over the tangled sheets where the indentations and creases from their entwined bodies and passionate hours still mocked him._

_Through a hot, suffocating fog he watched them moving together on the mattress, bodies writhing in visceral ecstasy, hips rolling with their heat, fingers hunting, conquering and surrendering with every lazy, hungry pass. He'd been a tracker. He knew how to read crime scenes for those subtle, near-invisible markers of human disruption. He'd hunted men and known that he would take their lives. But never had he been so haunted by that ability to see what had been but was no longer there._

_He saw a spidered bunch in the sheets and knew that her hand had been there, could see her fingers twining with the cotton as his body coaxed a long, vibrating moan from low in her throat. There was a subtle crater lower down. His knee had been there, supporting his weight above the satin of her body while she had opened her lips under his hot, feral command. Mirroring creases further up were where his hands had propped him up while he fused their bodies, her eyes glistening with unshed tears as she begged him to take more of her than he even knew how._

_She'd offered him a chance at heaven, and for his thanks, he'd condemned them both to hell._

_Booth was powerless against mangled sob that burbled out of his throat, and he buried his face in the comforter to hide his tears within the scent her body had left behind. He pummeled his fist into the mattress, his shoulders shaking violently as he slid to the floor, his knees giving out under the deadweight of him where he perched precariously on the edge of the bed._

_The soft moans and heavy breaths of their night of desperate lovemaking filled his ears, and Booth suddenly felt as if he was violating a private moment between two strangers with his intrusive memory of their frantically ardent coupling. Somehow he'd become a voyeur to his own life._

_How had he let them get so far away from those two lovers who no longer existed in his bed?_

_His body folded forward, hunching in on himself as he kneeled on the floor, slamming his fist again and again into the textured carpet until the skin melted under the hot friction and left little smears of blood and tiny peels of ripped skin staining the beige nylon fibers. The angry flesh was worn raw and stung mercilessly, or at least it would have if he'd been able to feel anything except the pulse of gushing blood as it bubbled in his temples and frothed like crude oil over his brain. With his other hand, he gripped his belly, fingers burrowing into the taut flesh as his lungs burned and his body heaved as he struggled to breathe, unable to draw air as he hyperventilated._

_The dark shadows of his empty bedroom clouded, his vision blurring against hot tears and a painful lack of oxygen._

_Breathe goddammit, he ordered his disobedient lungs. Don't you fucking dare pass out. Stay awake. Do it for Bones._

"_Bones," he hissed between grinding teeth._

_His eyes squeezed tightly shut and his nails biting into his abdomen in the fervent hope that those piercing electrical impulses shooting through his brain would keep him conscious, he stilled the hammering of his fist, letting it drop dead upon the floor and focused on pulling air into his lungs before they shriveled and imploded inside his chest. _

_Long moments passed by and strung him along through the glazed fog of oxygen deprivation until finally his trachea loosened enough to suck in a fast, desperate breath. He gasped, breathing hard against the soreness that knotted his chest and the pain in his belly that had nothing to do with bruisingly pinched flesh._

_His body was weak and racked with exhaustion as he hoisted himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the bed until the room stopped swaying quite so violently and his knees stopped threatening to give out under the unsupported weight of him. The sweater he wore was stifling and hot, so he jerked it over his head, relieved as the cool winter air struck him through the thin white cotton undershirt. He finally managed to straighten his back with a deep, trembling breath, wiping the cold sweat that pebbled on his brow with his forearm and trying to ignore the sticky chill of cooling perspiration as it glued his clothes to his body like a claustrophobic second skin._

_If he'd never suffered an anxiety attack before, he might have thought he'd just had a heart attack, but the sensation of his brain sending out the utterly convincing, facsimile equivalent of a death knell to the rest of his body was not a new experience for him. Turned out it was just another one of those failures that he'd thought he'd bettered only to find himself tragically disappointed, he thought bitterly._

_Once he was sure that he wouldn't collapse under his own weight, he left the bedroom with hurried, wobbly steps and made his way back down the hallway towards the living room. For the first time since he'd arrived, he noticed his cell phone resting easily upon the coffee table by the couch, and he lunged for it, dialing Brennan's number before he even had a chance to think._

_The first ring sent ice avalanching through his veins. What if she didn't answer? What if she never wanted to talk to him again? What the hell was he going to say if by some chance she did?_

_Another ring droned through him. Was this a mistake? Oh god, she deserved an in-person apology. He had to make sure she understood exactly what he was saying even if he wasn't even sure what the hell that was._

_By the third ring, he panicked and snapped the phone shut, tossing it onto the couch without a second glance._

_Seconds later, he was back in the Tahoe and flattening the accelerator as the tires let out a deafening squeal against the wet asphalt._

_He didn't remember the drive over to her apartment, and could only vaguely hope that he hadn't caused any accidents in his rush to find her. Praying fervently that she'd chosen to come here instead of hiding from him in some other undisclosed part of the city, Booth threw the transmission into park next to the sidewalk in front of her building and got out of the car._

_There was no answer when he buzzed the number for her apartment._

"_Bones, please. Just let me explain," he said into the intercom, trying to coax her into at least letting him offer her the apology she deserved before she slammed the door in his wholly deserving face. He coughed into his hand, his voice sounding hoarse and gruff, like someone he didn't recognize was speaking from his throat. That wasn't very far from the truth, he realized sadly. After all the things he'd done, the lives he'd stolen, he had never felt farther away from being the man that he had thought that he was._

"_Bones, I… I'm sorry." It really didn't matter if she didn't answer. Just as long as she was listening._

"_God, Bones, I've fucked this up so bad, from the moment you came over last night, I've done everything wrong. I can't… I don't even know what to say to make this better. I'm so confused. I don't know what the right thing to do is, but I do know that so far everything I have done has definitely been the wrong thing so—"_

"_Booth?"_

_Her voice startled him, and he turned around, letting his hand fall from the intercom when he saw her standing on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. Her hair, free of its customary ponytail, was pasted to her skull, darkened with the sleet that was pounding hard against the world. The gentle, drifting snow from that morning had apparently given up the fight while he'd been sheltered beneath the overhang, pouring his heart out to a woman who hadn't even been there to hear him._

_Embarrassed now that he'd finally found her, Booth mumbled, "I buzzed. You weren't there."_

"_No," she said slowly, her voice saddened, as if she was disappointed at finding him waiting on her doorstep. "I wanted to walk for a while."_

_Booth quickly swallowed a sob. "It's freezing out here. You're gonna get yourself sick," he said pathetically._

_Brennan shifted her weight between her feet slightly but didn't move. "Rain doesn't really make you sick, Booth. That's an old woman's tale," she said, looking down at her feet because she didn't have the courage to face the hurt in his eyes just yet._

_Booth's lip twisted slightly in what felt like a small, sickening smile before it faded quickly and he just stared at her, his jaw frozen with so many things he didn't know how to say now that she was there._

"_Bones, I—"_

"_Please don't," she said quickly, interrupting him. "It's fine, really. And I'm sorry if I offended you in any way. It's just that there are only certain ways that I know how to deal with things and last night, if I overstepped my bounds, or if I did anything that you felt were taking advantage… then I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… I was just trying to… I'm sorry…"_

_Booth stood there, paralyzed by a whole new, bile-rising wave of self-disgust. She honestly thought that he…_

_When he didn't move, Brennan turned to walk away, unsure of where she was going but unable to return to her apartment with her partner standing there blocking the door, so solid and immovable. Apologies weren't her forte, but maybe once he'd had enough time he'd realize that and be able to accept it from her, inadequate though it was._

_If he would even want to accept an apology from her, she thought dejectedly._

_Not that they had any time left between them, but there was nothing she could do about that. Maybe it was for the best that they spend some time apart and heal from this rift and whatever it meant for them and their partnership, she thought, her silent ponderings feeling treacherously like lies even to her._

_Awakened by her movement, Booth found himself moving swiftly down the steps after her, quickly becoming drenched by the crystallizing downpour of the hard sleet as it struck him, stinging his cheeks and wetting the thin cotton of his t-shirt, freezing him to the bone._

"_I lied," he called out to her as she continued to walk away from him._

_He wasn't sure where the words came from, spewing from his mouth with inundated panic when he finally realized that he hadn't said anything back to her and the apology she never should have given him._

_She paused. "What?" she choked out, turning her head just so that she might see the dark, towering silhouette of him out of the corner of her eye._

"_Before… in the cemetery… when you, what I told you, I… I lied to you," he said, his mouth running dry with all the things he didn't know how to say. "I guess I've lied about everything."_

"_I see," she said, her voice frighteningly quiet. She nodded her head once in a slow, contemplative but resolute motion before she turned to face forward again, giving him her back as she stood there on the sidewalk, her fingers nimbly clenching and coiling at her sides as she carefully considered his words._

"_Bones, please…"_

"_No," she said, turning around to face him, and Booth was terrified by the stoic determination that thinned her lips and tugged at the corners of her eyes. She was too calm, her thoughts too composed, and Booth couldn't see a way in, a way to make her hear him. But he could see the brimming boil that was barely contained by the air of forced collection that she had settled upon._

_She held up a hand to silence him. "Booth, it's okay. It's fine. Don't worry about it. I'll see you when you get back," she said dismissively._

_Booth saw red, rage suddenly painting over his repentance. "God damn it, Bones! Nothing about this is fine! Not one fucking thing about this whole damn situation is fine!"_

_Brennan's face twisted angrily, the grinding frustration their situation leaking into her voice without notice or consideration. "What the hell do you want from me, Booth? I'm sorry, okay?"_

_And she was, so very sorry that she'd hurt him regardless that she didn't understand any of what was happening between them. But he'd back her into a corner with his outburst, and suddenly she was just too angry to feel penitent._

"_Stop goddammit! Don't you dare say you are sorry to me, Bones, just don't," he snapped warningly. His face darkened dangerously, and he had to clench his fists at his sides to keep from moving._

_He should be apologizing, he thought. He should be groveling on his hands and knees and begging her to forgive him even though he didn't deserve one speck of absolution, but rage had bubbled up from somewhere deep, overwhelming and terrifying in its ferocity. Everything was out of control, the whole fucking mess between them and his forced departure heaving with fate's sadistic twists, spinning violently in a turbulent cyclone of hot, angry resentment, and lashing out viciously at the nearest target._

_And judging by Brennan's face, Booth knew he wasn't the only one feeling the heat._

"_I don't know how to do this, Booth," she hissed. She was so tired of despairing vulnerability. The irrational turmoil of the past twenty-four hours had finally caught up with her, and she just couldn't take it anymore but it seemed like Booth and his damned heart had unleashed an emotional beast in her that, now that it had tasted freedom, staunchly refused to be caged again. _

_Try as she might, she couldn't breathe through the maelstrom of heavy emotion that had been dammed behind a solid wall of compartmentalized logic for as long as she could remember, and it surged over her, ripping her away from anything safe with crashing force. Despite what others had accused as being a carefully constructed defense mechanism, Brennan had taken no conscious part in any attempt to hide herself away from feeling. She didn't believe in introspection or self-deceit. Instead she merely ignored what she didn't understand, refusing to give any value to what her above average intelligence couldn't comprehend._

_And this impromptu crash course in overwhelming, irrational emotion had left her feeling pulverized and suffocating under the weight of something she didn't know how to survive._

_Baser instinct kicked in, sending a rush of chemicals through the fight-or-flight center of her brain, and unable to resist the call, she all but bared her teeth in response to this antagonizing threat._

_Anger, it seemed, was easier for her manage, was something she was at least familiar with, and one little spark from Booth's own rage had instantly sent all that hot, roiling vulnerable emotion hurtling in one direction._

_The last time she'd been this overwhelmed by choking uncertainty, she'd punched him in the face and flattened him to the ground. If he stepped within reach, Brennan wasn't entirely sure that she wouldn't do that again._

"_I don't know either, Bones," Booth said with a sharp, angry shrug. "Truth is, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing about any of this."_

"_Oh that's real good then," she snapped hotly. "This is your fucking area of expertise, Booth. You're supposed to be the one helping me with all of this because none of this makes any damn sense to me."_

"_I can't help you, Bones," he said dejectedly, grinding his teeth and staring at the ground as the crystallizing rain beat in torrents upon the sidewalk._

_She took an involuntary step forward, nearly in reach of him. "Then what do you want, Booth? What do you want from me? Because I thought I knew but obviously I was really fucking mistaken when you said you wanted me while we were having sex."_

_Booth's head snapped up and his eyes narrowed dangerously over glistening blackness. "I meant what I said," he growled._

"_You just said you lied to me," she said, stabbing an accusing finger into the saturated cotton plastered to his chest. "You lied about everything… you just told me that. What else have you lied to me about?"_

"_Yeah, I lied, okay? Happy now? I lied when I said I would never betray you. I've lost count of the number of times I've done that in the past day. I'm leaving you tomorrow, and even though I don't want to, that doesn't change anything. Every time I touched you, every kiss that promised something I can't give you… I lied in the cemetery when I said I didn't want you to say—" he snapped his mouth shut and looked away._

_Both were quiet for a minute, Brennan letting her gaze fall to study her feet while Booth looked over his shoulder across the street, trying to anchor his sanity to something solid only to find out that the line had been cut and he was floating helplessly with the tide._

"_I don't understand any of this, Booth," Brennan finally said quietly, her voice sad and so full of painful confusion._

"_I can't promise you anything, Bones. I can't ask you to wait for me on the off chance I'll come back."_

_Brennan shook her head and a single tear slid from the corner of her eye and over her cheek, quickly lost amongst the raindrops. "Why are you doing this, Booth? Why do you keep acting as if you are going to be executed instead of sent on assignment? Yes, it's dangerous, but you've done this sort of thing before… your intelligence, level of physical fitness and prior experience in the field greatly increase the odds of you surviving even the most challenging of situations so I don't—"_

"_I have a bad feeling about this one, Bones. Ever since I got that letter, it's like a soft twitch in the pit of my stomach, and I just know that something bad is going to happen."_

_When she didn't respond, Booth risked a glance back at her but was struck by the incredulous anger that she was shooting at him._

"_You have a bad feeling?" she retorted, her voice fairly dripping with condescension, as if she couldn't honestly believe he'd justified himself with something so incredibly stupid. He could almost see the steam rise off her previously cooling ire as the coals of her anger flared back to life._

"_Yeah, I do," he snapped back, unable to feel anything but defensive as she lifted one haughty, disbelieving eyebrow at him. "You wouldn't understand, Bones. When I was in the service, guys used to talk about 'the feeling,' like catching a glimpse of the grim reaper out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes guys just knew it… they fucking KNEW it, Bones, and sure enough—"_

"_Oh, would you just shut up about your fucking 'gut', Booth," she snapped, exasperated with his blatant refusal to see logic. "That makes no sense! The universe is an amalgamation of random chance occurrences and unpredictable variable reactions. Nothing, not even you're damn precious 'gut' can predict the future. You are acting completely irrational, and now you are jeopardizing everything, wasting everything over something that has a statistically insignificant chance of happening."_

"_Fuck statistics, Bones!" he yelled. "I know something isn't right, and it isn't fair of me to do this to you. It doesn't matter what I want. I can't promise you—"_

"_I never asked you to, Booth!" Brennan was shaking with her desperately slipping control. "I never asked you for anything!"_

"_But you did, Bones. You're the one who brought love into this." Before the words had even fully left him, he was choking on regret, but he'd been unable to stop himself as he found himself once again flinging spite at the heart of the woman he loved._

_Brennan jerked back as if he'd struck her, and Booth knew that it would have been less of a betrayal if he had. She stared at him, unblinking, eerily calm as her eyes fell hard upon his, and Booth wanted to collapse to the ground and weep at the emptiness suddenly staring back at him through that crystal blue, silent screams of guilt and self-hatred reverberating off the walls of his skull in deafening sirens._

_He didn't say anything, he had no words left to use, and he was frantically trying to understand what was happening between them because none of this was going like he'd planned. Not that he'd had an apology transcribed inside his head when he'd found her that didn't sound trite and just so whorishly inadequate, but this, standing in the rain screaming at each other was definitely not what he'd imagined happening._

_And what he'd just said to her…_

_Oh god, this had to be a nightmare. It couldn't possibly be real because if it was, he'd just he'd just hurt the one woman he'd ever truly love in the one way she wouldn't ever be able to forgive, the one way that would seal her off from ever letting anyone else get close to her ever again._

_What the hell was wrong with him?_

_He opened his mouth, but there was nothing left to say. Cold rain pelted his face, mixing with the tears that sluiced down his cheek and nose, the salt combining with the painfully crisp chill of the winter rain upon his lips, but his mouth was so dry he thought if he tried to swallow the walls of his throat would fuse together._

"_God… Bones, I'm so sorry…" he grated out._

"_It's fine Agent Booth. Have a safe trip," she said coolly, stepping around him as she headed for her apartment building. She didn't spare him so much as a glance as she passed him, brushing his arm with hers as if to prove just how much he no longer mattered to her, and he wondered if he just tried hard enough if he could will his heart to just stop beating because the human body wasn't designed to handle that much pain._

_No! His brain roared, and suddenly the pain in his knuckles from when he'd shattered the Tahoe window flared as if to remind him of what it had been like to not know where she was, to know that she wanted to be anywhere but near him, and the friction burn on his palm from pummeling the floor of his bedroom seared as if to scream a reminder that he wouldn't survive another night alone in that desolate and empty apartment, that she was the only person that could make him feel anything but lonely._

"_Bones, stop!" he yelled, spinning on his heels to find her approaching the bottom step that led up to her apartment building._

_She didn't stop, didn't even slow, but Booth saw just that tiniest flicker of hesitation pause her midstride before she tried to mask her acknowledgment of his voice with quicker steps._

_That was all he needed._

_Closing distance swiftly, he grabbed her elbow and spun her around to face him, using her own momentum against her, but Brennan was quick, her reflexes sharply trained, and she didn't fight his pull. Instead she caught him across the cheek with a tightly closed fist, snapping his head back on his shoulders, but Booth had anticipated that likelihood enough to root his feet and lock his body so that he didn't have to relinquish his hold on her arm, instead absorbing the solidly throbbing blow with his face._

_He turned his head back to find her glaring viciously up at him and reciprocated with a hard stare of his own, black fire pooling like hot oil inside his eyes._

"_Nice shot, Bones," he said roughly._

_Then he said a silent prayer and leaned forward, mashing his lips to hers._


	9. Burn With Me

Sorry for the long delay with this one. All I can say is that life lately has been... bad. Enough said. But hopefully things are better now and things can get back on track. The next chapter should be up in maybe a day or so. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and review, you're awesome. Extra thanks to those of you who've reviewed every chapter, you guys are beyond awesome and your comments really help me so keep up the great work! Ok, so here we go...

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_His mouth pressed insistently against hers, biting at the lips she wouldn't open as she tightened her mouth and fought to turn away from him. He used his teeth to forge an entrance she wouldn't surrender, licking and gnawing at the hard line of her mouth in a way that was both fiercely demanding and anxiously pleading, dying to lose himself inside the heat of her body and crushing embrace of her forgiveness even though he knew that didn't deserve it. That he probably wouldn't get it. But he wanted it. And that had him kissing her with brutal savagery even as his avalanching panic began to plateau into eerie and unnerving sense of calm that was more frightening than anything he'd felt since all this began._

_He was bracing himself, he realized coldly, survival instinct working overtime to prepare him for the devastating blow of her rejection once he let her go, his heart readying itself to be broken. Fighting to accept what he was about to lose. Because he'd have to let her go eventually and far too soon. He'd have to live with never being able to touch her or hold her again._

_Because there was no way they'd ever be okay when this was over._

_And Booth balked the moment that thought violated his mind._

"_No," he rumbled a deep growl against her lips, his mouth never stopping its angry seduction._

_He felt her pushing hard against his chest, her resistant palms splayed across his pectoral muscles, shoving and burning through the drenched and icy cotton plastered to the dips and curves of his torso. She couldn't get the leverage to wrench herself away with his hands still firmly gripping her elbows as he anchored her to him, forcing her to feel everything that he had fucked up putting into words._

_She felt it. He knew she did. She'd all but told him those words that had proved both shattering and absolving all at once, and he'd never felt more desperate for her to break him again._

_Feel me, he wanted to scream at her, feel this, feel us…_

_Brennan fought him. Tooth and nail, she fought him. When she twisted her head in the vain effort to escape him, he slid his arms around her back, locking her arms where they were pinned helplessly between them, caging her seamlessly against his body, the wet fabric of their clothing fusing together as he brought the heat of his raging, desperate ardor against sweltering rebellion of hers._

_He pressed his advantage ruthlessly, feeling himself crack a little more with every struggling jerk of her body but he couldn't give her up. Not yet, not before he made her understand. Not before he finally allowed himself to understand what he'd done… what he'd foolishly almost ruined._

_He prayed that it was only "almost" ruined._

_It had always been honesty that held them, that made what they had built together so beautiful and incomparably special. Through the blood and the drive and the danger of the mission that had brought them together from the very beginning… it had always been the truth that cemented the bond that kept them._

_And Booth was done with lying, both to himself and to her._

_No matter the heartache or potential consequences of what he was unleashing upon her now, at least he could give her that. He didn't know what the near future held for him, possibly death… maybe life if karma was feeling particularly generous towards his redemptively sinful soul. Unable to promise her forever, he burned his lips to hers and demanded that she accept from him the one and only promise he had to offer._

_The truth…_

_His soul…_

_His love._

_The muscles in his arms twitched reflexively as he tightened his grip on her while she struggled, sliding his hands up her spine to cup the back of her head against the bruising force of his kiss. His mouth opened hotly against the hard line of hers, stroking her defiant lips with smooth brushes of his tongue, dying for another taste of her, but he denied himself that hungry urge to push forward. As desperate as he was, he couldn't bring himself to take that from her by force._

_A sound slipped from her throat, quickly camouflaged into an ambiguously neutral hum before he had the chance to decipher the emotion that drove it from her. Was it a purr of desire? A cry of denial? Growling outrage? Sighing acceptance?_

_In his heart Booth was a gambling man. He knew the value of a risk. He understood what it meant to tempt fate with a game of chance, and although it had been years since he'd risked so much as a nickel to chance, he gambled with his life on a somewhat daily basis._

_And now he was about to spin the barrel on his .45 caliber love and prayed that just this one time he wouldn't be left bleeding in the dirt._

_Because he had a feeling that this would be the only gamble that would ever truly matter and one he couldn't afford to lose. But he had to know. He had to know her choice. Her answer. More than he needed to breathe._

_Slowing his kiss and gently calming the pressure of his lips on hers, he couldn't resist one last soft kiss to her upper lip before he relaxed his grip, but he couldn't bring himself to break away. He cradled her gently, his fingers teasing slowly through her wet hair, sensing the exact moment that Brennan realized she was no longer captive._

_Brennan tore her mouth away with a harsh gasp and shoved him violently, though Booth's staunch determination caught him solidly with only a step of space between them, her hand still extended as if to ward off any further advance he might make. She appeared livid, her skin flushed, red and burning with the biting cold of the pelting rain and Booth's amorous assault._

_She watched him with wary indignance. His shoulders heaved, as he struggled for breath through the sharp, icy air, his whole body burning alive with a fire that prickled in his fingertips and coiled painfully tight in the pit his stomach. He didn't appear to feel the beads of rain that pelted his face and clung to his cheeks, rolling down the bridge of his nose and into his eyes where the black pools of his pupils had bled over, staining that gentle brown with predatory heat. _

_Brennan stared at him, her body raging and trembling against the emotional onslaught that was ripping through her, unsettlingly confusing and wholly overwhelming. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't focus on anything except the dark, towering form of her partner-suddenly-turned-lover and the tension that was battering between them, threatening to capsize them both into the storm. She balled her fists at her sides, her shoulders shaking with her fast, short breaths, anger, irrational and entirely justified, coloring her thoughts and tightening every muscle until she was fairly vibrating with the strain of not striking him again. _

_Because she wanted to… with a feeling that she had never been victim to before with anybody, she wanted to hit him again, to see his jaw snap to the side and see that flash of suppressed anger that she knew would spark inside the blackness of his eyes while he struggled to restrain himself from retaliating. She couldn't even muster any guilt at the sudden knowledge of the satisfaction she would feel to lash out at him, this man who had decided years ago to rescue her from herself and her solid science, this man who had forced her to feel so much, confused and confounded her until she suddenly found herself continually stuck at emotional crossroads that had never hindered her previously linear life. She was desperate to know that she wasn't alone inside this feeling, that she wasn't suffering and suffocating alone and desolate behind red waves anger and foggy black shadows._

_It wasn't his fault… but in a way it was his entirely. He had to be an emotional creature, and he just had to have his own logic that was frustratingly beginning to make more and more sense to her with every heated argument and each gentle, prodding assurance that she had once believed he had no right to give, making her want things that she had no right to want. He had to make her want to believe him, to desire to understand how he happily strayed from the road of science and fact and somehow found irrationality fulfilling._

_She hadn't been lying when she had told him that she envied his and seemingly everyone else's ability to believe in those things that sounded so wonderful but couldn't possibly exist. She hadn't been lying when she had said she wanted to be able to believe in those things too but didn't know how._

_And that bastard had looked her right in the eye and promised her that one day she would._

_He just had to be Booth. Trustworthy, honorable, gentle, safeguarding Booth who made her trust him... who made that so very easy even as he complicated everything else._

_And he just had to lure her into loving him in spite of logic… in spite of reason… in spite of herself._

_For long dragging seconds they could only stare at each other while the winter rain continued to fall in a swirl of delicate flakes and heavy drops, plastering her hair to her skull and flattening his usual spikes. Both of them were trying not to snap under the weight of the air between them, each secretly desperate for the other to be the one to break. Brennan fought for breath as she watched him. It was all too much… _

_Too much conflicting emotion…_

_Too much irrationality…_

_Too much weight…_

_Too much heat…_

_Too much heart…_

_Too little time…_

_Too many words… or too few, she really didn't know._

_And so much Booth, dominating her field of vision, blocking out everything with his commandeering presence as he refused to give her room to breathe, his troubles the reason she had no time to think. She tasted him on every inhale and felt his heat radiating through the brittle, frozen air, his touch haunting her, making her wish that she could forget what it felt like to have his hands on her and his arms around her, knowing that she never would… honestly believing she would die if she ever did._

_She could feel the heaviness of his gaze pushing down on her like a physical burden, compressing, tightening, crushing, immobilizing, his black, unblinkingly predatory eyes never leaving hers even while she unabashedly roamed his face, taking in the tension and the rage and the heat and the desperate need that corded his neck and pulled along his jaw muscles._

_He blinked._

_She broke._

_Snatching at his neck with clawing fingers, Brennan slammed her body into the solid mountain of him. Her mouth was hard and fastening on his as she devoured him savagely, arching her back to touch as much of him as possible, and he must have been bracing himself for any sort of violence because he was ready for her instantly, his teeth already scraping her lips even as she drove her tongue into the hot, dark smoldering furnace that was Booth._

"_I hate you," she breathed into his mouth without ever halting their kiss, her voice accusing and uncompromising._

_Booth sank his teeth into her bottom lip. "I know."_

_And then his arms were back around her, using every inch of his crushing reach to hold her body against his so that they connected from mouth to thigh, their cold skin burning as they rubbed and grazed anywhere they could find purchase. His lungs were on fire but he didn't care. To make sure that she didn't either, he brought his hands up to clutch her face to his, denying their bodies the oxygen they needed so that their kiss might survive just that much longer. He was more than happy to die with her breath being the last he ever tasted._

_But he needn't have worried. Her nails pinching into the back of his neck echoed his desire with rivaling fervor, her need surpassing even his as Brennan, for the first in her life, lost her mind._

_No matter what else she'd ever done, she had never given over complete control of her body or her brain before, always holding a small section of herself firmly in check because it just isn't rational to willingly abandon sanity, regardless of the temptation. But when that dam had broken, when she'd launched herself at him just then when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the most logical solution was to walk away, she'd been lost. And never being one to do things by half… she'd lost herself so completely that she had no idea how to rein in the madness that had taken over._

_And at the moment it didn't even occur to her to try._

_Brennan was dying. Or at least that's what her body seemed to be telling her. Damn the endorphins and serotonin and the "heart" and whatever else was fueling the voice inside her head that was screaming that she'd die if she ever let go of this man. Her fingers clenched tighter. She felt sick, fevered, dizzy, and the only cure seemed to be the aggressive lips of her partner, the violent assault of her lover's tongue on her own, Booth's hands gripping her face to his with bruising force._

_There was no tolerance for softness, no appreciation for a gentle touch. There was too much emotion, too much feeling, and the only way she'd survive was to feel something that was more… she didn't know what… just plain more._

_Strong emotions bled seamlessly into one another, rage and hurt and fear easily firing into passionate desire so fast that Brennan was barely aware of her hands fumbling with the button on his jeans even as she fed on the panicked anger of his kiss. Only slightly more aware than Brennan, but enough so to remember that they were still on a public sidewalk, Booth snatched her wrists to stop her from releasing him right there beneath the streetlight as she fought his grasp for the zipper because he knew that if she succeeded, he couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't take her right there on the mid-afternoon street. She bit his lip hard in punishment for his hindrance even as she shook him off and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, dragging him hurriedly up the steps to her apartment building, their mouths never parting even as they stumbled across rain-frosted cement. She needed him, was desperate for him, her body turning traitorously against her rational brain, threatening to extinguish if she didn't get him inside her apartment and inside her body. An ache she'd never felt before ripped at her skin, slowly and agonizingly pulling her flesh apart cell by bloody cell, unraveling her insides as chaos and desperate need rippled through every atom that formed the genetic puzzle of her body._

_The purring thrum of her heartbeat pounded against her eardrums, shaking loose any remaining inhibitions as her blood rushed through her so loudly that it drowned out her ability for rational thought. Brennan had never experienced anything like the sensation of being unable form coherent thought, her body so alive with vibrating feeling that it never even occurred to her that her mind had made itself scarce the second she'd touched him._

_Later, when rationality returned, she would find it disconcerting and a bit disturbing to have been at the mercy of something so overwhelmingly out of her control. But at that moment, all she knew was Booth's hands on her hips as he drove her backwards, burning her skin where his thumbs disappeared beneath the waistband, his mouth ravaging hers even as she fought to devour him first._

_Together they scrambled up the stairs, drunk on the fire of their lust that each feared would flicker and burnout if they so much as tasted a breath that wasn't laced with the other's flavor. Her hands locked around his neck again, Brennan quickly backpedaled until her back hit the entrance door to her building, and she groaned into his mouth when his fingers plunged into her front jeans pocket in search of her keys, the heat of his hand scorching her through the cold, damp denim, so very close to where she desperately needed to feel him._

_Booth cupped the side of her face with one hand while he blindly fumbled with the keys and the lock with the other, his fingers tangling possessively into her hair, thrusting his tongue deeper passed her lips even as he fought to restrain his touch from wandering to the rest of her body. He knew that if he let go of her face, he'd have to arrest himself for what he'd grab next._

_After what felt like forever, the latch finally clicked and Booth jerked the door open, twisting Brennan around so that he could get the door open wide enough to fling them inside gracelessly but effectively before the heavy oak slammed shut behind them. Fortunately, there was little foot traffic around them given that it was the middle of a work day, so they managed to avoid much embarrassment as the good doctor dragged her partner towards the elevator as quickly as she could with her lips still fused to his._

_The silence in the lobby was deafening, broken only by the guttural sounds of moaning and wet, biting kisses as Booth's willpower crumbled and he hoisted her against the elevator doors, both hands gripping her ass as he ground himself into the apex of her thighs as best he could manage, and Brennan arched higher, going up on her toes so that she could slide her body up and down his torso while he pressed her harder into the elevator door._

"_Oh… god, Bones—"_

"_Shut up," she mumbled angrily, sliding one of her hands up his throat to cup his jaw, grazing her thumb over his Adam's apple. "Stop talking."_

_Neither heard the ding of the elevator bell. The supporting metal suddenly disappeared from behind her back as the doors slid open, and Booth lost his balance, hurtling them forward into the mercifully empty elevator. Unable to catch his body, he barely had time to cup the back of her head to cradle her skull as they slammed into the back wall of the lift, driving the air from her lungs and into his with a groan and the thump. Brennan grabbed his hair viciously and yanked his head back away from hers, her chest heaving against the press of his, her lungs squeezed between the walls of Booth and polished metal._

_She sucked in desperate breaths to battle the lightheadedness that seized her while Booth reached back to hit the button for her floor. When his eyes returned to hers, she could see the adrenaline-flooding rage shimmering there beneath the surface, matching her own with equal fire, and it was then that she realized just how enmeshed their two worlds had become as they drowned, awash with her burning chemicals and his dangerous emotions, entwining them with all the hard, unbending iron of chainmail. They were both protected and trapped inside a cocoon of something Brennan had never believed existed, though she knew now that she'd never be able to argue against him again now that the tangible proof was locked inside her and around her, constricting and scarring in the most dangerously beautiful of ways. Whether it was a romantic fallacy or a physiological reaction, the proof was there and glaringly undeniable._

_Not that Brennan had ever been one to argue against fact. She longed for factually-based truths, hunted relentlessly for them, cradled them possessively, trusted them explicitly._

_And now here he was._

_Booth – fact._

_Her reaction to his proximity – fact._

_The pain in her chest at his absence – fact._

_Facts – the only thing she had ever really trusted, ever allowed herself to believe in, and now he was there._

_Booth was fact. Booth was truth._

_Booth was hers._

_His mouth had fused to her neck, sucking on the hammering jugular as her pulse beaded against his tongue. He moaned wildly, a deep thunder in his chest as he gorged himself on her heartbeat, starving for a piece of her heart like it was the only thing that was keeping him alive._

_He figured it probably was._

_So he devoured her savagely, drunk on heartbreak and frenzy._

_Her hands were raking frantically through his hair, fingers coiling and pulling and threading as if she couldn't pinpoint her own needs, her body tearing in a thousand different directions and every one of them led straight to him. Every other raw emotional variable surging through her couldn't suppress the ineffable constant of Booth._

_She picked her path… though the end result seemed to be predestined regardless._

_His hands were everywhere by the time the elevator door dinged their arrival to her floor, and her hands were desperate to match him touch for groping touch. She groaned as the keys he was still holding dug into her back under his rough grasp, but she pushed back harder into his touch, hungry for any and every sensation he could give her. She'd managed to slip her fingers underneath his t-shirt to run her nails over the hot, damp skin of his back while the other snaked down his front towards his jeans again._

_Booth grunted as she cupped his erection through the wet denim, holding him tightly as she backed off the elevator and into the hallway and used her grip on his crotch to drag him along with her. Later he would laugh, thinking that she'd been dragging him around by the dick for years without even knowing it, and for once he was grateful that she'd skipped the figurative and gone straight for the literal attack._

_She pulled away from his mouth, breaking their kiss as she backed herself against her apartment door and took her keys from his hand, her fingers flexing tightly over his hard-on while she watched the emotions flicker across his face like ripples over water, her other hand finding the keyhole behind her with unerring precision._

_Booth grunted and braced both hands against the doorframe, his whole body sagging forward into her space as he struggled to keep his head up, his eyes locked on hers as he pressed his hips forward to encourage her ministrations on his aching body. Her gaze burned right back into his, swiping her thumb roughly along the length of his zipper as the door swung open behind them._

_In one swift, fluid motion, Booth dropped his arms to grab the back of her thighs as he lifted her against him while they barreled into the apartment as the last semblance of patience and restraint snapped between them. He kicked the door shut with a blind foot and dropped to his knees awkwardly with Brennan still wrapped around him. He winced as his knees thudded hard against the cherry wood floor of the foyer, but he never took his eyes from hers. With her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, her body flush with his in a seductive press, it was oh so easy to collapse the rest of the way onto the floor as Booth let his weight crush down onto her. Brennan cupped his face between her hands as her back hit the floor, struggling to tear herself away from his dark, hypnotic stare while she pressed frantic kisses against his mouth, whimpering when his tongue finally met hers in a rough, molten caress._

_With a need that was so strong it was blinding, Brennan yanked frantically at the fastening on his jeans, shoving them down over his hips and groaning loudly at the feel of his naked erection already thrusting hard between her legs. She wriggled around beneath him, earning a few more choice grunts from Booth as she peeled her own wet denim down her thighs just as far as was necessary for him to fit between them. While her hands were still fighting with her bunched up jeans, Booth jerked forward, driving himself into her with a loud cry that a surprised Brennan echoed against his neck, sinking her teeth into his shoulder as her hands flew up to grip his back._

_There was no hesitation, no gentleness or tender touches, just hard, unrepentant Booth ramming himself deeply into her body, his pace frantic, her back aching deliciously as she bruised against the hard wood floor, the rough, chaffing caress of his barely-low-enough jeans burning the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs as she moved her hips up to meet his every thrust as best she could with her own jeans tangled just below her knees. _

_With both his hands occupied with supporting his weight with the relentless driving of his hips, Booth used his mouth and the rest of his body caress her with more feral intensity than he had ever thought existed inside him. He coiled his hips with every thrust, clenching his belly and dragging his cotton-covered stomach across hers, their chests never parting from each other with every stroke of their turbulent rhythm. Their shirts bunched uncomfortably between them, cutting into skin as they tangled and pulled, but neither of them cared. Brennan sawed her legs mindlessly against his as best she could, reveling in the roughness against her thighs, the teeth of his zipper catching sharply against her flesh on every surging upswing of his thrusts._

_Both of them were screaming and gasping raggedly against the other though neither noticed. Booth's face was tucked tightly against hers, the erotic growls and snarls of his harsh breaths tickling her ear as he bit at the hinge of her jaw, and Brennan had her eyes squeezed shut so tight that sparks of light were burst behind her eyelids, her mouth falling open in deference to the wild moans that were clawing their way out of her throat. Nothing existed for her except those shots of light and damning screams and Booth, pounding himself so hard inside her that he impossibly became her only reality._

_For those precious beautiful moments, nothing else existed… would ever exist… would ever matter again._

_Of its own accord, because she was far too lost to have any smidgen of control left, one of her hands found its way beneath his tangled shirt, his skin hot and wet and slick beneath her grappling fingers, and she dug her nails into him, raking across his flesh over and over in a desperate, instinctual need for survival, unaware that she was bleeding him even as he robbed her of any entire universe. Her other hand gripped at the hair on the back of his head, twisting painfully as she arched impossibly high against him, coming on a scream and curse as her orgasm ripped everything, even consciousness, away from her for long, glorious moments._

_Booth was beside himself. He'd been lost the very second he'd entered her body, and Booth, for all his talk of romance and feeling, had never been one to lose complete control any more than Brennan had. There was always too much at stake to really lose it, to let it all go and sever that last wisp of sanity because it terrified him to imagine the violence that he knew was buried deep inside getting free. He'd seen it in his father, that total abandon when angry, bitter fists connected with a son's tender flesh, and Booth knew that he'd never be that man, he'd never allow himself to taste that freedom if those were the costs._

_But he'd discovered himself helpless the moment he slammed himself inside her, his own need feeding on the violence of her desperate desire… and there had been no going back. That raging abandon, that mindless insurgence had been unleashed and she rode it with him as their bodies collided again and again, his insanity fueling hers and hers powering his._

_It was going to be brutal. _

_He was going to hurt her and he had no doubt that she was going to hurt him at some point during all of this. There was no avoiding the pain that this was going to bring them if they defied logic and attempted the impossible. But in those moments where he knew he'd actually seen that diaphanous connection as their souls merged behind his clenched eyelids, that he'd been privileged enough to taste that sweet, heady flavor of their forever on the tip of his tongue… he knew…_

_They were going to try. They were going to succeed._

_Because they were better than logic could ever hope to be._

_He collapsed on top of her in a trembling mass, his arms sprawled out beside them as he melded bonelessly against her warm, lithe form. He didn't have the strength to lift himself off yet, nor, if he were perfectly honest, did he have any inclination to do so in the near future. His body was still nestled safely inside hers, their clothes hopelessly tangled and choking around them as they shook gently from overexertion, muscles screaming and aching, the wood floor feeling deliciously cool against his face where he rested his forehead upon it._

_Booth breathed in deeply, turning his head slightly to feel her damp hair against his skin as his whole body relaxed into a deadweight, so replete and exhausted that he nearly drifted off right there until he heard her hum softly against his ear._

"_Booth," she whispered breathily._

"_Hmm?"_

"_I… I don't hate you," she said quietly, almost fearfully, as if she were only just now realizing the possible implications of what she'd said._

_He turned his head to kiss her neck softly. "I know."_


	10. The Light in the Dark

Sorry again on the delay, work is really demanding around the holidays. Plus my boyfriend just got back from basic training, so needless to say he doesn't like being ignored in favor of a computer after being away for months. So blame him for wait lol. As always, thanks tons for reading and special thanks to those of you who review. The response to the last chapter was unbelievable so let's try to keep that ball rolling. I've also got a new story in the works that should be up in the next day or so for those of you who seem to like my writing style. Anyway, on with the story...

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_He rolled off her then, each of them immediately missing the contact the moment the cool air found its way between their battered and fevered bodies. They were both still wet, their clothes damp with the cold assault of rain and snow and their skin slick with the hot sheen of sweat that they'd built between them, the dichotomic energy sweltering between them as they lay on their backs side by side, breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling. _

…_Both of them feeling completely lost and somehow just a little bit found as well._

_And both absolutely terrified to learn what their shared moment of madness had meant to the other._

_Their clothing was skewed beyond recognition, Booth's shirt wrenched high and uncomfortable beneath his armpits though he made no move to straighten himself out, his pants still riding just below his hips, his hand mindlessly flopped against his pistoning abdomen as he breathed hard. His dishevelment mirrored Brennan who was herself naked from knee to navel, her sweater having twisted awkwardly about her stomach. She lifted a hand to her forehead, brushing away beads of sweat as she closed her eyes and tried to get control of her breathing while she focused on her heartbeat's rhythmic hammering._

"_Was… that was…"_

"_Yeah." Booth swallowed hard on a heavy breath. "That was."_

_Booth could feel that damn silence once again settling between them, chilling him to the bone as he wondered just how she would react now that rapidly cooling ardor wasn't short-circuiting those overactive neurons inside her brain. Although he couldn't bring himself to look at her just yet, he could hear that trembling in her voice. She had frightened herself… and he had probably frightened her too. He knew how to read her, and even in his dumbest moment he would have been able to sense just how much she'd given to him in those glorious moments of unbridled passion, just how much she'd allowed herself to stray from those rational boundaries she adhered to so rigidly… leaving him hopelessly in awe of the way that they'd rewritten the term "making love" because surely nobody had ever, in the history of mankind, felt the cool fire that they had created together._

_She had lost her fucking mind. And he'd been the one to strip her of it, he thought with a stab of smug masculine pride. She had cast her most treasured possession aside in favor of touch and heart, just as he had done. And if he was overwhelmed by what had just happened between them… he was terrified to think of what was streaming through that painfully analytical brain of hers._

"_I'm sorry," she said finally, her voice tremulous with exertion but he could hear the firmness of her conviction._

_She really was._

_He cringed. He didn't want her to be._

_Booth ran a hand over his face while he studied a particularly fascinating speck on her ceiling. He dropped his arm to the ground with a thump and sighed tiredly._

"_Why?" His voice came out harder than he intended, but he just couldn't help it. He really wished that she would stop saying that. Because he wasn't sorry, not by a long shot. And even his overly active conscience couldn't convince him to feel anything akin to regret… not when he felt like he was so goddamn close…_

_Brennan opened her eyes and ran her fingers tentatively through her tangled mess of hair while she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. Without knowing it, her gaze became fixated on the same speck that had riveted Booth's attention as they both struggled under the weight of the air between them, under the words that had been said, the words that hadn't and the ones that shouldn't have been… both haunted by the words that should have been shared but that fear and pride and self-preservation had never allowed to pass cognition. _

_Neither were sure what the next step was in the rippling wake of the madness they'd just experienced together and caused in one another, each afraid that with just one more touch they might spark the powder peg that they were perched so precariously on. And yet to Brennan it seemed like maybe touch was the one thing she could trust between them, the one thing she could trust to not be tainted by the inevitable weaknesses and faults of human nature, the one thing that couldn't be guarded or dishonest, not even unintentionally… or even worse, with the best of intentions. Or maybe the explosion had already happened, she wondered. She certainly felt like a bomb had gone off, leaving her dazed and disoriented and not at all feeling like her normal self, her ears still ringing and adrenaline still flooding like a hurricane over her sanity._

_Maybe it was already too late to go back. She was mildly surprised to discover that she desperately hoped it was._

_She wanted to look at him, to test the waters of what they now were to each other because for all of her extensive vocabulary, she couldn't come up with anything that seemed to fit, but with the awkward tension suddenly back and crackling between them with palpable tenacity, she wasn't sure if eye contact was such a good idea…_

… _terrified of what would happen if she did… and he turned away…_

_He was terrified of her, of frightening her and what would happen if he found out he'd pushed too hard, unleashed even a breath too much. She was terrified of his good intentions resurfacing… because her hyper-rational brain was beginning to detect a pattern emerging between them, a frustrating realization that every time they broke their physical connection his heart seemed to have a way of coming between them and pushing them back apart, creating a barrier that she didn't know how to breach or even if he'd let her._

_The devastating irony was that his heart, his love, seemed to be their one fatal flaw… the one thing keeping them apart and that was an enemy that Brennan had no idea how to approach._

_It seemed that blinding, fearless passion had proved to be just as ephemeral as she'd originally hypothesized because now that the fevered ire had cooled and their touch had broken, she was suddenly at a loss for how to proceed, that fear of rebuff settling back into the pit of her stomach as she fretted over what was running through his brain while they lay there, unable to bear looking at each other._

_Suddenly she understood why less rational people were so tempted and found it so easy to let their emotions dictate their actions instead of logic. After the sensory overload she'd just experienced during her little seductive glimpse into madness, she suddenly had the empathy to truly understand its appeal. And she was finding herself frustrated to be so quickly thrust back into the world of logic, where actions were best measured with tempered rationale and cool forethought instead of the hot, scrambling drive of instinct and wild chemical reaction that had seized her body only moments before, when the only concern had been the immediate satisfaction of need and completely mindless to consequence._

_For the first time in her life, Brennan resented rational faculties._

_Sometimes being irrational could be oh so sweet right up until the moment it became oh so very confusing._

_That was a difficult lesson for her to swallow, but the proof was irrefutable… nothing in her rational world of science and logic had ever made her feel the way he seemed to be able to effortlessly with nothing more than a loaded glance._

"_Why?" he demanded again, his aching heart leaking into his voice as he snapped. "I wanna know why you're 'sorry'?" He didn't mean to sneer, he really didn't… but he just hated that fucking word so much…_

"_I don't really know," she said. She shook her head slightly, frustrated with herself. "I don't even know why I said that. It was like I couldn't even think and that's not something I have ever experienced before and I—"_

"_Shhh," he cut her off gently, immediately contrite at hearing the distress in her voice, and he let his hand reach over to find hers even as his eyes couldn't muster the same courage. He threaded his fingers between hers, their hands resting lightly on floor between them. "It's gonna be okay…. _We're_ gonna be okay," he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze._

_With an audible sigh, she rolled her head to the side to look at him. He hated the way that felt like a forced surrender._

"_Evidence thus far leads me to believe otherwise," she said evenly._

_Okay, I deserve that, he thought bitterly. Booth sighed, swallowing hard against the bite of self-recrimination that pinched his gut. "Trust me, Bones. Everything is gonna be fine."_

"_You can't possibly know that."_

"_Yes," he said, quivering slightly as he felt the touch of her gaze wash over him out of the corner of his eye. "I can know that."_

"_You've spent the passed 24 hours or so trying to convince me of the exact opposite of that declaration," she reminded him._

_Damn._

_His eyes burned a hole into the ceiling above them, the air suddenly feeling very dry and gritty on his sensitized flesh, the walls of his throat sticking together as he fought to swallow back the tears that threatened to desiccate him. He couldn't move, couldn't blink, his whole being focused on finding a way out of this labyrinth of that he'd unintentionally walled them inside with his good intentions, the whole while wondering if he'd be forced to let her go of her hand if either of them were to ever find their way out of the dark alive._

"_I need you to trust me on this one, Bones," he said quietly, hoping that that would be enough, sure that it wouldn't even be close…_

"_How do I do that, Booth?" Her voice was so small and careful, and each syllable was another section of his heart being sliced away with a scalpel of justified precision. She sounded lost with just a tinge of curiosity, as if there was only the tiniest part of her left that actually believed he held the answer to that question, the rest of her engulfed in such hopelessness that any assurance would only breed an even more devastating letdown._

_She had a right to wonder. After everything they'd been through, and everything he'd put them through in the last few hours, all those seeds of doubt that he'd been sowing since the moment he'd let himself freefall into her kiss. She had the right to hesitate._

_Though it killed him to hear those words fall from her lips with such naked vulnerability._

_It killed him to know that she doubted._

_He struggled to find an answer, one that she would understand and one that he could stomach in the telling. Because his soul was spearing through his mind from some deep, dark and mangled place inside where he'd buried it… and he needed her to hear it too. Booth closed his eyes and prayed that the trembling in his gut was a resilient sprig of hope rather than the ominous trepidation it felt like._

"_Because it's us, Bones. What we've always been… that's all I know how to be anymore. I don't know how to be anything else, and I don't want to know. So we are always gonna be okay... no matter what." Absolute certainty shook him to the very roots, and in that moment he knew that there was nothing he couldn't forgive, no amount of pride he wouldn't swallow, nothing he wouldn't do, no pain he wouldn't suffer, nowhere he wouldn't go to keep that promise true. "I would die to keep that true."_

_She swallowed against the lump of fear that was clinging to the back of her throat and dropped her gaze to the floor, wanting so badly to believe him but… _

"_Then why can't you look at me?" she whispered to a floorboard._

_Booth sucked in a breath, unable to stifle the graveled sob that ripped free of him as he finally rolled his head to look at her while a warm tear slip from the corner of his eye to graze his temple, clenching their intertwined fingers tighter and dragging them up to press a soft whisper of a kiss to her knuckles. She whimpered slightly, just the faintest of sounds as her lips fell open and her eyes pressed shut as she turned her face further into the floor and away from his, but it was enough to tell him that she was struggling for control. He suddenly realized the selfishness of his rigidly locked demeanor, undoubtedly making her feel like she was alone, like she was the only one affected by this storm because his need for self-control affronted her with blatant, if deceitful, evidence his calm collection._

_He'd abandoned her before he ever even let her go._

"_Bones," he choked breathily._

_Slowly he reached over with his free hand to trace her hairline, running his fingertips reverently down her cheek and over her jaw to caress her neck, cupping her nape as he smoothed his thumb up and down her throat._

"_Bones, please look at me," he whispered, his voice thick, viscous and breaking further by the second._

_Fuck self-preservation. _

_Fuck pride. _

_Fuck the bleeding lips of his own gaping wounds._

_He watched as a single tear stole away from her eyelashes when she squeezed them shut tighter, beading with crystalline perfection as it glistened delicately at the tip of her nose before splashing silently onto the floorboard beneath._

"_Bones," he sobbed, his heart clenching._

_Slowly, cautiously, her eyelids slid back and revealed her blue-eyed gaze to him._

_Stripping himself of every last defense, Booth shattered… he shattered himself for her. _

_Letting every hurt bleed through his body, flooding in a torrent through his veins, he let his nightmares wash out of him and over her, allowing her to see things he'd never even let himself bring to the light of day or conscious thought. All those fears he buried, that rage he suppressed so that he might find the strength to face himself in the mirror day after day and not see the man he was secretly terrified he'd become if he ever broke his seasoned but always tenuous control. He showed her all of those shortcomings he knew he'd always have, all those failures and faults he didn't want to acknowledge in himself even though he saw them everyday._

_Before her eyes, Booth bared all with nothing more than a broken look and pain-filled eyes, but that was enough. She knew… in that way they'd always been able to speak without ever uttering a sound… she knew what he'd done, and what it cost him to do so. All to show her that she was not alone, that he was with her every step, every hurt, every desire… every step of the way._

_For an eternity she studied him, her eyes drinking in every vulnerability as all of his strength was sapped from him, and he made no effort to resist, gave no thought to hiding as she silently catalogued all of the ways he was broken, feeling his scars and his hurts as if they were her own, and some of them were, some of those they'd given to each other because no one can hurt you more than the one you love the most._

_His palm slid carefully up her neck to touch her cheek, and she turned to nuzzle deeper into the warm splay of his touch, her eyes never breaking from his even as more moisture fell from both of them._

"_I don't hate you, Booth," she whispered into his palm, her lips hot and burning with every soft brushing. "I really need you to know that."_

"_Oh Bones, it's okay," he said softly._

"_No," she growled sharply, bringing her free hand up to cup his palm tighter against her cheek, her other digging her fingers ferociously into his knuckles where their hands laid entwined between them, her eyes boring into his, wild and intent. "Tell me, Booth, please," she whispered desperately, close to sobbing. "Tell me you know that."_

_He stared at her for long, dragging seconds, so long that he could see the spark of fear burst just behind that shimmering blue in response to his silence. Leaning closer, he gently pressed his mouth to hers._

"_I know that, Bones," he breathed onto her lips. "I do. I swear, I do."_

_He kissed her sweetly then, tenderly worshipping her lips with a slow and heady gratefulness that had been noticeably absent in that fiery moment of their recent coupling. There was passion in his touch, of course. Booth had no doubt that any interaction between them would never find them lacking in that department. But this kiss wasn't about sex or lust or even desire; this was a healing balm that he was salving over their wounds… wounds that he'd caused with only the best of intentions and the deepest of fears, wounds that she was graciously allowing him to nurse._

"_Bones, I… I should tell you I'm in—"_

_She cut him off with a quick hush and another kiss, capturing his lips with a gentle force that left no room for argument. She was tired of confessions, she decided, the passed few hours leaving her wary of words and even less trusting of her ability to rationally understand anything that was taking place between them. And if she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure how many more words they'd be able to survive. But she did trust them. She trusted what he made her feel, the way his touch affected her, and that could be shared without the pollution of cheap and unreliably abstract language._

_He could taste her relief at his compliance in her kiss. It was in the way her touch softened and heated, losing the sharp stab of desperation that had peppered all of their earlier touches, and for the moment, he would let her have the silence that she needed. They were done talking for now. But she knew it. And he knew it. And before too long, he would say it out loud and cement it in reality for good, for once and for all… forever._

_That knowledge alone infused him with a lightheartedness that he was sure had to border on nirvana._

_She murmured soft lost words against his mouth as he cupped her neck with a large hand, dragging his thumb back and forth over her cheek while he slanted his lips across hers in bridled reverence. Brennan met him halfway, as she did in all things, her competitive nature making her eager to match and surpass, doubly zealous now that she believed she was beginning to understand more of Booth's "heart" perspective better than she had ever imagined she would. He'd bared himself to her, despite the pain and the fear and trepidation, he'd shown her his heart… and now she wanted nothing more than to expose her own to him, for him, and despite the recognition of the irrationality of her desire… she wanted him to know that it was for just him, that he was special because she'd never even thought she'd want to feel that way even when she didn't believe that she could. Threading her fingers through his hair, she teased the ends as she encouraged him to lean in closer, tempting him with the seduction of a rich, contented moan._

_As he rolled over on his hip to get closer, his naked groin brushed against her thigh, suddenly reminding both of them that they were bare and awkwardly exposed on the cold wood floor of Brennan's foyer. Booth laughed, glancing down at their bodies, taking in the comically wrinkled, bunched up shirts and mangled jeans and conveniently and delectably naked waistlines. Brennan followed his gaze down their bodies and added a chuckle of her own._

"_Wow."_

"_You can say that again," he added, shaking his head slightly._

_She looked back up at him. "Wow," she said with her ever present, patented Brennan-grasp on the literal and figurative. _

_At that Booth erupted into hysterics, slinging his arm across her body in a fierce hug as he laughed wildly into her neck. Brennan coiled her arms around his shoulders and threw her head back, laughing with equal fervor, his joviality infectious and just as amusing as the sudden realization that, what she suspected would from now on be one of the more important events in her life, had taken place with both of them naked in most bizarre manner on her apartment floor._

_She smiled broadly and shook her head with humored disbelief, absently stroking her fingers through the hair at the base of his skull as he tucked his head into the crook of her neck, holding her tightly they rocked together slowly on the floor, hip to gloriously naked hip. The pads of her fingertips brushed over his strong, smooth back, running a teasing line across his shoulder blades where his shirt had bunched up high on his torso. He groaned then, resplendently defeated with his mirth slipping from him as he pushed his hips forward against her thigh to let her feel him as he hardened and lengthened where he was nestled between them._

_He leaned his head back to stare at her face, smiling with tender affection as he brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear._

"_Think you can stand up?" he asked her, pressing his mouth against her forehead as he spoke while he traversed her hip and thigh with exploratory fingers._

"_Since I can still feel my toes, I doubt that your previous vigor has affected me with paralysis, Booth." With anybody else that would have been a joke. With Bones…_

"_Good to know."_

_She rolled her shoulders and arched her back a bit, groaning at the satisfying crack of her stiff and abused spine, which had taken the brunt of his amorous attack against the hardwood slats. "My back may be a bit sore for a while, however, but no long term damage."_

_He frowned, regretting that he was again responsible for her discomfort. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been that rough with you—"_

"_Booth," she cut him off by cupping her small hand over his mouth. "It's fine, really. Don't worry about it."_

_He nodded carefully, not wholly convinced but unwilling to argue that the moment._

"_Come on," she said softly, pecking his lips quickly while she stroked his cheek. "Off the floor," she commanded._

_Booth chuckled as she rolled onto her back and wiggled her jeans back up over her hips. She looked over at him and rolled her eyes, blowing a puff of frustrated air at a lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes again. For his part, Booth didn't move from where he was laying on his side with his weight propped up on his elbow as he watched her with amusement glinting in his eyes. She could see where that earthy brown color, so rich and natural, was pushing back the darkened arousal of his pupils._

_She sat up and twisted her legs around so that she was perched up on her knees. Leaning down over him, she slid her hand around his neck and kissed him sweetly for just a second before pulling away and climbing to her feet._

_When he still didn't move, she reached her hand down to him and tugged him up. He grinned as he rose slowly to his feet, fighting with the jeans and boxers that were twisted and bunched around his legs at mid-thigh. He glanced up at her as he struggled to tuck himself back inside his clothes without the knotted material cutting off any critical blood flow and chuckled, almost nervously._

"_What?" she asked._

_He shrugged a little. "I dunno, just sorta feels like you caught me with my pants down, you know?"_

_She squinted at him curiously. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."_

_He shrugged again, not really knowing how to explain to her exactly what it was that he was feeling. It was a confusing recipe of emotion, all of that, literally and figuratively, naked vulnerability with a dash of awkward apprehension and the subtle after-taste of giddy-inspiring hope._

_With no small effort, he finally managed to get his pants over his hips, but when his hand reached for the zipper, she stopped him by slipping her hand into his and brought his knuckles up to her lips._

"_Go wait for me in the bedroom," she said softly, nodding in the direction of the hallway._

_Booth cocked his head. "You're not coming with me?" he asked, his brow furrowing._

_She gave him a coquettish smile. "I'll be down in just a minute. I just need to retrieve my keys from the front door and grab a glass of water."_

_He nodded slowly, suspecting that she also wanted a few minutes alone to compose her thoughts in wake of the explosive combustion of their fevered and violent lovemaking and the subsequent moments of strained tension that immediately followed. He couldn't blame her for feeling shell-shocked, not with the way the slowly fading adrenaline was still quaking his own composure right off the Richter scale. No, he thought, he couldn't begrudge her a moment to herself._

_Especially since she hadn't asked him to leave…_

"_Okay," he said gently. "I'll be there when you're ready." He brushed his thumb over her cheek in short but tender caress before he turned and retreated down the hallway to find her bedroom._

_She watched him go, unable to understand the sudden impulse that nearly ripped his name from her throat in a desperate attempt to call him back to her once he had disappeared from her sight. He wasn't leaving, she repeated silently to herself. He was just down the hall, only a few feet away. He was waiting for her, he'd said. He'd promised._

_Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, she moved to the front door and opened it to retrieve the keys that had been recklessly left behind in the haste of their mind-numbingly urgent passion. Glancing down, Brennan frowned at the way her hand trembled slightly where she gripped the door handle, and she quickly shut the door and tossed the keys on the nearby table._

_She alternated between flexing her fingers and clenching her tightly balled fists as she moved on autopilot into the kitchen. A glass was pulled from a cupboard, filled from the tap, but the cold water sliding refreshingly down her throat did nothing to ease the quivering that was wrecking havoc in her belly._

_They were going to be okay, she thought, remembering the words he'd spoken and the desperate conviction in his voice. And she believed him, partly because she wanted that to be true, but also because he was Booth, and if he said they were going to be alright then she would trust that he knew what he was doing. _

_He'd hurt her. She wouldn't, and couldn't, deny the pain she'd felt deep in her chest when they'd been out there on that street, snapping at each other with a ferocity that had shocked her nearly as much as the deliberate hurtfulness of his words as they'd both gone for blood. She supposed that this never could have happened easily between them, nothing that had ever happened between them had been easy, but for all of the antagonism they had ever felt for one another over the years, she had never imagined that either of them would ever be intentionally cruel._

_But they had been. Both of them were guilty. And then in a turbulent whirl of hot, rage-battering sex they'd hurt each other some more._

_And then somehow, after all the hurt and the words and violence… they'd come out okay. Not necessarily unscathed, she admitted, but perhaps leaving them both marred in the best of ways. Their scars were now a testament to each other, to their battle._

_She'd cut him and bit him while he'd fucked her almost clear through the floorboards. And yet, when the memories flooded her brain and she recalled the anger and indignation and need to punish and shame of their guilt looming heavily, she still found herself labeling what had taken place between them as lovemaking, such as Booth had described it to her all those years ago. Maybe with even more conviction than any of the other times they'd come together over the passed few hours. Because she'd never lost her mind to anyone, never willing cast her sanity aside and no one had ever been able to steal it away from her. And in one frantic heartbeat, Booth had done both._

_And he was still here._

_He was still waiting for her._

_For the first time since all of this began, she honestly allowed herself to believe that he always would be. That man, that walking, breathing, argumentative and broken man who was all the tangible evidence her analytical mind would ever need to prove that faith was not always a house of cards on a breezy day._

_As much as they had ever hurt each other, she was still safe with him._

_He was still waiting for her._

_Smoothing her hands over her impossibly wrinkled sweater, Brennan toed off her shoes and left them by the entrance to the living room, padding barefoot down the hallway to find him, suddenly feeling like they'd both been waiting for far too long._


	11. Whisper Me Your Goodbye Heart

As always, thanks for reading and thanks tons for reviewing.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_Booth felt awkward and painfully aware that he was alone as he pushed open the door to Brennan's bedroom. The silence that greeted him made him feel invasive, reminding him that the only thing he was sure about was that he was decidedly unsure about everything and had been that way for far longer than he cared to remember._

"_Don't be stupid," he mumbled quietly to himself. They were fine. They were better than fine. They'd talked, albeit briefly, and most of it without using actual words, but he was beginning to feel that even if they weren't quite on the same page yet, they were at least reading from the same chapter. She just needed some time to think, that's all. She'd asked for time. And then she'd told him stay._

_She hadn't asked for space… only some time. Time to let the dust settle around crumbled walls of her rationality. How long could that possibly take? He wondered grimly._

_He groaned softly and shook his head, thinking about how true it was about being one's own greatest enemy._

_They were going to be just fine, he repeated to himself over and over inside his head, unsure if he felt more or less certain of that with every passing mantra._

"_This is ridiculous," he muttered, hastily whipping his shirt over his head before he had time to talk himself out of it. _

_A plan was formulating inside his head, and while he was fairly certain that it would backfire on him in every possible way, he decided that tonight was the night for vulnerability. He'd prove to her that he was done with hiding from her… hiding his interest in her, his fears of what would happen, his worries about what might not ever get the chance to be, his desire to make her his own in every possible way he could conceive of, his hope that she would want the same from him… done with hiding his love from her._

_But she hadn't allowed him to say it. He'd finally been so close, just on the verge of letting those four letters roll off his tongue and into reality where they couldn't be disguised or buried or denied anymore, but she had stopped him._

_She hadn't wanted to hear them._

_That, more than anything else, was making his fingers drum in an agitated cadence against his thighs as he paced nervously back and forth inside her bedroom, waiting anxiously for her to join him there and terrified of the actual moment when she would._

_She wants you to stay, he told himself._

_Vulnerability was not something that came as a common craving to him. He was so used to being the shoulder to cry on, the rock upon which everyone around him leaned, and he'd been that way for so long that he no longer knew how be on the other side of that give-and-take partnership. He did what he could to spackle over the cracks and flaws in his being, not necessarily in any attempt at ill conceived perfection but more as a way to add a protectively thicker barrier on those scars that hurt the most. Those were not things that he liked to or made a habit of putting on display where just anybody might see them._

_But Brennan wasn't "just anybody," he reminded himself, and tonight he wanted to be the honest man that he always liked to believe that he was with her, more so now that he didn't have to pretend that he was satisfied with the strictly platonic structure of the relationship that they had successfully maintained for so long._

_Because it hurt to think that she might not see him that way, that she looked through him to see every other man on the planet but him. And even though rationally he knew that wasn't true, rationality was something that was always ironically absent when it came to him and the ever-empirical Dr. Temperance Brennan. No matter how much she tried to force-feed him logic, nothing about them would ever really make sense in ways that could be measured and charted or even really verbalized. On paper, they never should have been able to function together, both too stubborn to overlook the overwhelming differences that quantified them as individuals. And yet, years into this unlikely partnership, the only thing that either of them was more passionate about than their intertwined career paths was each other._

_Booth sighed loudly, his naked chest rising and falling with the futile attempt to keep himself together. Rubbing a nervous hand over his face, his fingertips brushing against the burn of whiskers that he reminded him that he was desperately in need of a shave, and then his shoulders rolled in a to-hell-with-it motion. _

_His fingers worked quickly on the fastening of his jeans, and in seconds he found himself standing naked at the edge of her bed as he waited impatiently for her return, petrified and yet complete desperate for her to see this vulnerable side of him. Desperately hoping to see that she might still respect him once she had caught him defenseless and unguarded. Desperate for her to see that he trusted her with even the ugliest parts of himself, those parts that even he couldn't bear to see._

_A breath blew in a slow puff between pursed lips._

_He sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, rubbing his fidgety hands hesitantly up and down the tops of his thighs as his gaze settled absently upon his bare feet, his eyes roaming the veins that pushed up against the surface, perusing the long-healed fracture lines that he knew disfigured the bones underneath. He could always see the breaks, even through the fleshly canvas that wrapped them and the sinew and muscle that strengthened them, but he always saw the damage that was underneath, and he wondered vaguely if it was anything like what Brennan saw when she looked at a human being. She saw so easily beneath the skin to the vulnerability of the bone. Did she see the person, the behavioral and emotional make-up that they were composed of, or was her first instinct to see the dead skeleton beneath the animated flesh?_

_He wondered if she had to work to differentiate between the two, and if maybe that was why she had such a difficult time connecting with people on a more personal level. Perhaps that was a price that she paid for her genius, for her talents… that her knowledge of what lay beneath was so vast and so ingrained that it consumed and blinded her to the intangible human that was submerged under the weight of the body._

_Blind to the forest for the trees… he wondered…._

_Had years of practice and training and study made it impossible for her to see the forest of the soul that was fused between the lines of a field of bones, or did she only see the trees for what they were, as parts to make up a whole, like a complex puzzle just waiting for her to piece it together? Or did she have more control than that? Did she see everything just the way she wanted to see it? If he'd made it his life's work to be the human lie detector in their partnership, he couldn't help wondering if she'd taken on the role of the human x-ray. He saw through the deceit to find the truth. She saw through flesh to discover the evidence. But what did all that mean when they turned those talents on each other?_

_What did she see when she looked at him? She'd seen the x-rays, she knew the breaks and the scars and the stories but…_

_He wiggled his toes for a second, thinking about the way he viewed himself differently whenever he looked down at them and saw nothing but the broken pieces that had been put back together, those pieces that he hid beneath garish, comically colored socks, thinking of the way he buried his old hurts behind the elastic walls of cotton-woven humor. _

_He'd always thought they were so different. Even when he was drowning and swallowed up, suffocating in his unrequited love for her, or at least the love that he thought he'd been alone in until that one glorious moment when he'd slipped and she'd caught him with her kiss. Now, the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't help realizing just how wrong he'd been for so very long, how'd he'd missed seeing through the lies they'd told each other, how he hadn't been able to see her heart through the barrier of her flesh._

_Talk about missing the forest, he thought with a soft, sad smile._

_It all cycled in a steady whirlwind through his head, his fingers twitching nervously on his thighs as he stared down at his feet, reliving things he'd never really be rid of. The past breaks that lay hidden beneath the fleshy present… that past that was also future, for that day when the flesh decayed away and revealed the scarred bones underneath… that future that promised to become present with every heartbeat that passed away and faded into eternity._

_He idly wondered if she'd ever stare down at his bones one day, and he couldn't help but wonder what she'd see if that day ever came. There were markers aplenty marring his skeleton, subtle little reminders of the life he'd led and which she'd be able to read from him effortlessly, probably with more ease than she'd ever been able to read him while he was alive. Or would she look down and see ferocity with which he'd loved her, the intensity with which he'd missed her whenever they were gone from one another, the promises that he'd done everything in his power to keep… would she see the way he'd died with her on his mind as he slipped into the darkness?_

"_What are you thinking about?" she interrupted softly, leaning against the doorframe with her head tilted slightly as she studied him, her arms folded across her stomach._

_He glanced up sharply, startled._

"_Nothing." He said quickly, wiping his sweating palms on his legs, suddenly feeling more exposed than he'd anticipated he would as he sat completely naked and vulnerable at the foot of her bed with her watching him carefully from across the room, fully dressed with that contemplative look on her face._

_She didn't say anything, just slowly pushed away from the wall and crossed the distance between them until she was standing in front of him, towering over him as he sat on the edge of her bed. His gaze dropped back to the floor, studying the patterns on the rug beneath his feet as he listened to her soft footfalls drawing nearer, flinching slightly as her bare feet came into view while she waited patiently in front of him. His head twitched to the side, unsure of the indecision that had settled in the pit of his stomach, his eyes darting nervously about the room before he finally lifted his gaze to hers, a shaky breath stealing from his lips._

_Her face was calm but blank, the planes of her countenance smooth and expressionless, but the way her hand lifted to kiss his temple with the pads of her fingers, slowly, gently, trailing just the tips ever so softly down the side of his cheek to the strong, hard line of his jaw, feeling the muscle tick as it revealed the tension he was struggling hard against his instinct not to hide from her… no, the way she touched him was anything but expressionless. His breath caught, somewhere between a sob and a sigh as her thumb brushed his bottom lip and then lifted to cradle the side of his head, trying to smooth away the frown lines with her fingers._

_Without a word, she peeled her sweater over her head and tossed it aside along with her bra, her blue eyes watching him, studying him with that unreadable expression she wore whenever he managed to surprise her buried beneath her work in Limbo. Those meticulous blue flames caught the slight flaring of his nostrils, the subtle darkening of his eyes as the pupils bled into that soft coloring, nearly impossible to discern in the dark shadows of the room where the only light fed in pale white shafts of ghostly afternoon fog through the parted curtains. She watched his pulse jump against the skin of his throat, his forcibly quelled anxiety almost palpable on the air._

_She reached out to him again slowly, as if afraid that he'd spook if she moved too quickly. Her hand found his face, cupping his cheek with gentle strokes of her fingers as she soothed him, her touch softening the wrinkled brow that uncertainty had drawn together._

_Booth stared up at her, warring with the throes of his own vulnerability even as his hands reached out to cup her hips while she stood there, her jean-clad knees brushing against his bare ones, her hands coming up to rest delicately on his shoulders. He stroked her skin absently with his thumbs, and then he leaned in, pressing a kiss to her navel and when she didn't object to their broken eye contact, he let his eyes fall closed and focused on wet lines he was creating on her stomach with his mouth. He could feel her gaze burning him through the top of his head, but she didn't speak and so neither would he, he decided. She'd wanted a reprieve from confessions, and he had only one left to give. So for now he was content drag his lips across her bellybutton while his dexterous fingers slowly began to unfasten the catch on her jeans and slide them over her hips._

_She stepped out of them easily when he pushed them down her legs, her hands stroking lazily across the breadth of his shoulders, her thumb occasionally grazing his neck whenever his mouth drew a quiet breath from her. But her eyes never wavered, staring down at his dark head of short hair as his nose brushed the bottom of her ribcage._

_He slipped his arms around her body to draw her closer to him, and she slid easily onto his lap as she brought her knees to rest on either side of his hips, straddling him while he adjusted his weight to catch a little more of his balance with his feet against the floor. One of his long, thick arms curled around her back, resting along the length of her spine as his palm splayed wide between her shoulder blades to hold her body up against his chest. His other palmed her low on her hip, pushing the heat of her center closer against his belly. The position aligned his mouth with her breasts, and he eagerly sucked one of her nipples between his lips, kissing her with dark, wet heat, his tongue fervent, his teeth pensive, his lips respectful and needy as he loved her pebbled flesh._

_She crooned softly as her hands moved up to cradle the back of his skull, pressing herself closer to him as her shoulders curled forward as if she could wrap herself around him. Her hips rolled slowly, mercilessly over the tempting hardness of his erection, rubbing herself with his heated flesh as her thighs parted a little wider, struggling to settle her body still closer to his. When he bit her, she cried out and her head fell forward, her cheek resting on top of his head while one hand fisted in his hair, the other dropping to sweep over his broad, hard back._

"_Booth," she groaned desperately._

_Without a word, he lifted her body up slightly, adjusted his hips, and then pushed himself inside, muffling a groan against her sternum at the way her muscles stretched for him, the way her thighs tightened and clenched a little bit against his body, every fiber of her willing, eager and desirous of every sensation he could give her with just a simple push._

"_Uhhh, gu… god, please."_

"_Ah fu—"_

_His head shot up, his eyes locking with her own as they grew smoky and dim with the embers of her desire. "Did I hurt you? If you're sore—"_

"_No no no," she said quickly, shaking her head in vehement denial as she gnawed her lower lip between her teeth and rocked her hips forward. Not that she wasn't a little sore. They had been undeniably rough with each other not even an hour ago, his pelvic rhythm having been no more gentle on her body than the hard floorboards had been but… _

"_So… uhhmm, Booth… it's good, it's so good, so goo-ah," she cried softly while her lips sought out his, mumbling her words of pleasure against his mouth while she leaned over him._

_Her hand slipped up his throat, silently urging him to tip his head back further so that she could bring her lips to his neck, kissing the stubbled underside of his jaw as her words became thick and unintelligible. Her movements were slow and lethargic, her pace meticulously smooth but anything but sluggish. He could feel her heartbeat hammering wildly inside of her, the muffled thudding of it pulsing its rhythm against his own as if struggling to find the synchronization between them. Her blood rushed and throbbed, and her breath heaved with exertion while her limbs coiled with slow, sweet deliberation, pressing and gently rocking them together._

_When his hand slipped to that familiar place at the small of her back, the other still supporting the length of her spine, she let her thighs slip apart a little more, sliding down as deep as either of them could go, and then she stilled, letting her fast, hard breaths quiet while she draped her arms loosely about his neck and rested her forehead against his._

"_Booth," she said calmly, if a little breathily, after a moment. "Booth, please tell me what you were thinking." _

_Her voice was steady, hushed but hungry for so much more than just the push of his body between her legs. The distress on his face had been blatantly evident when she'd joined him in her bedroom, his anxiety rolling around him like waves and her newfound resolve was desperate to soothe and calm this man that cradled her so gently and caressed her so reverently._

_He sighed and leaned back to glance up at her, reaching up to cup the side of her face, smiling when she nuzzled slightly closer into his welcomed touched. Their eyes locked, held, and he squinted ever so slightly as he watched her face hovering above his._

"_You," he said. He swallowed hard. No more secrets, he'd promised. "What… what you see when you look at me."_

_Her head tilted again, peering down into his eyes questioningly. "I see _you_, Booth," she said hesitantly, and he could see her struggling not to hide her eyes away from him now as she battled her own shortcomings with subtly. "I feel that I must not be understanding your meaning," she continued, unsure and decidedly frustrated._

_He smiled softly up at her. "Sometimes it's like we're speaking different languages, isn't it, Bones?"_

_She cocked her head at him. "We never communicate in any language other than English, Booth."_

"_Yeah, but there are a lot of miscommunications between us, wouldn't you say?" he insisted gently. "Especially lately…"_

_Brennan nodded slowly, her eyes scanning his face intently as she tried to follow him between the language barriers that he was bringing to light. She understood what he meant. More often than not they did have to build metaphorical bridges between them, having to define things that they hadn't ever thought would need defining as they were forced to acknowledge and compensate for the vast differences in their worldly perspectives._

"_I'd be forced to agree with that observation."_

_His smile pulled a little wider, amused by her formality even as she sat naked astride his lap with their bodies primordially joined._

"_Is that okay, Booth? What I see when I look at you… is that enough?" she asked hesitantly._

"_Yeah, Bones, that's enough," he assured her. "That's everything there is."_

_She nodded slowly, unable to resist moving her hips slightly though it caused her eyelids to flutter shut for a second at the feel of him touching so deep inside her, reminding her of just how much closer the passed few hours had made them, how much they had changed them… how much nothing would ever change them. _

"_No secrets, right?" she asked once she was able to open her eyes, though the lids were low and hooded, struggling for focus._

"_No more secrets," he agreed._

_Pushing his face into the crook of her neck, his hands moved to her back as he began rolling his hips up into hers. There wasn't the leverage for hard thrusting with them both sitting upright, so he settled into a gentle rhythm of rocking his hips upward, using his hold on her body to make her sway against his smooth undulations. Her arms curled under his arms and up around his shoulders, holding onto him desperately as her head tipped back to expose the long column of her throat to the heat of his mouth and the burn of his whiskers while her body moved in swelling waves over his._

"_No secrets," he murmured as he sucked on her collarbone and stroked his tongue over the hollow of her throat. "Everything, Bones… every goddamn thing."_

"_Booth," she moaned softly, letting him taste the vibrations of her pleasure as he slanted his lips over the center of her throat. "Ohhh… yes, this… I… Booth, I--"_

"_Tell me you see everything, Bones. Tell me I'm not a coward for hiding all this time," he pleaded._

_She sighed his name throatily into his ear as her head fell forward towards him, desperate for closeness, more proximity, more of this one man and everything that he offered and promised with such cavalier yet undeniable certainty. Because she wanted everything that he offered… she believed him when he said it was possible._

_He moaned as she teased the shell of his ear with her tongue. "You know how often I think about you, Bones? How desperate I am for you?" he growled. He grabbed her hips with both hands, his lips burning a trail up her throat to just below her chin. "All the damn time," he breathed._

_Booth let his hands slip from her body then so that he could reach up to cup her face, cradling her with his palms as his thumbs smoothed over her cheekbones, studying the shimmer of her eyes in the misty light. She smiled gently down at him, her irises swirling and storming with every turbulent emotion that was brimming inside of her, and he felt his lips respond in kind as he brushed a chaste whisper across her mouth._

"_Booth." She gasped as she was flooded with another tender rolling of their hips. There was no thrusting, no need to suffer a withdraw in order to feel that slow but sturdy push inside again… instead he rocked below her, letting her ride the swell of his oceanic passions while they drowned together, breathing in the heat of each other, hips circling, undulating as they arched tighter against hot flesh and flexing muscle._

"_Oh god, Bones," he moaned wildly, his gaze fused with her own glistening stare. "I'm so sorry… for everything. The things I've said, the way I've handled this whole thing, I… I feel like I failed you, Bones. That I didn't trust you enough, that it never even occurred to me to that that's exactly what I was doing even while I was doing it, I—"_

_She cut him off with a kiss, hushing him gently as her lips pressed to his, her hands covering the ones he still had anchored against her face, stroking his knuckles tenderly with her fingertips._

_As tempted as she was for a taste of the warm tongue that he flicked against her bottom lip, she pulled away, clutching his hands closer against her face._

"_Booth," she said steadily, clenching her muscles and rocking a little harder against him. "Are we making love?"_

"_What?" he asked, confused and struggling for breath as the passion continued to swirl distractingly between them._

"_Are we making love?"_

"_I mmmm, god… yeah, we're making, uhh, making love."_

"_Good," she said, sliding her fingers to the base of his skull as she pulled his mouth back to hers, slipping her tongue inside to caress his while she mewled softly against his lips. When she pulled away for a breath, he followed her lips, leaning forward and dropping his arm to wrap around her shoulders as if to stop her retreat, obviously unwilling to part from her kiss._

_But he was still confused, the orgasm he was hovering on the verge of making it more difficult than usual to follow her reasoning. He was having trouble focusing, couldn't seem to read between the lines of what she was saying, so for the moment he let it slide onto the back burner and let sensation flood over his body in wash of pleasure. _

_She was panting against his temple before dragging her lips across his brow, and Booth let his hands wander up and down her sides, brushing his thumbs against the soft outer curves of her breasts as his whole reason for living suddenly centered on waiting desperately to hear that hitch in her breath, feel that shudder of her spine, and the hot rush of her desire flooding all around him, pulling him along with her now that he was finally the one who was allowed to take her and follow her there._

_Then the thought struck him like lightning in the desert, sparking him aflame with a crackle of electricity that would probably be fatal if it ever stopped feeling so damn good._

_They were making love… him to her… she to him… love, she'd said…_

_Brennan spasmed in his arms, her body humming with the vibrations of her body's thorough satiation and her emotional, soul-quaking release, but when she was finally able to open her eyes and force her dilated pupils to focus on his face, she saw that his eyes were closed, his jaw clenched with his concentration as his body continued to rock between her quivering thighs._

"_Booth," she whispered his name, dropping her forehead against his and cupping his face with both hands. "Come on, baby, let go," she urged, the appellation slipping unwittingly from her lips, but at the sharp intake of breath and the way his eyes flew open to greet hers, boring into her with tangible, throbbing possession, she could hardly bring herself to let her mind reprimand her for that irrational slip of the tongue. If something so trivial had that effect on him, brought him so much pleasure… she supposed that she could live with that irrationality._

"_Baby," she tried again, getting a taste for it on the tip of her tongue. If it were scientifically possible, she would have said that the blackness of his eyes darkened further into a shade not yet discovered beyond that absolute purity of glistening onyx. Pleasure spiked through her blood, heating her battle-wearied body and chasing away her exhaustion as she got a sharp taste of how delicious it was to please this man. _

_She had once told Dr. Wyatt that she could not think of anything that she would not do to help Booth, but she was now discovering that she could think of nothing she wouldn't do to simply make him happy either, to tip the scales that much further away from discord. Protection was not enough, assistance was not enough. She wanted take away his pains, yes, but that wasn't enough. Because Booth deserved so much more than neutrality. Being trouble-free was only half the battle, and Brennan knew then that she never wanted feelings of indifference to touch this man again, that she wanted to do whatever she could so that pleasure might be the only thing that Booth ever felt again._

"_Booth… baby," she altered with a chuckle when Booth gave a low growl at the loss of his treasured moniker, "Come on. It's your turn to feel good," she whispered against his parted and panting lips._

"_No," he said, shaking his head though he didn't break away from where their foreheads still touched. "Don't, don't wanna stop… can't stop, can't ever stop."_

"_Why?" she asked softly, watching as his eyes squeezed shut again and his hands began to wander her body restlessly._

_He licked his lips. "We're… uuuuhhh…. we're making love, Bones. You and me."_

_She stroked his cheeks silently, reveling in the way his body still pulsed inside her own, little tremors catching her time and again and keeping that rosy flush from ever cooling from her sweat-slick skin as she watched him, his brow drawing tight and pitted with desperate concentration, his eyelids clenched and his mouth hanging open under the force of his heavy panting._

"_Again," he managed to plead._

"_Baby," she breathed as another pinnacle rose and fell within her, making her hold onto him tighter as she moaned for him._

"_We're making love, Bones," he said again, though it sounded as though he was talking to himself as much as he was to her. "You and me… love… we're making love."_

_He gasped as his body finally broke away from his mind, losing all control as he dropped his face to her chest, pressing his mouth against her heart while he rode through the wave on a sobbing moan of pleasure._

"_Making love, making love, we're making love, making love, just you and me," he rambled on against her heartbeat, and as much as she wanted to, Brennan resisted the urge to press him tighter against her. She didn't want to risk muffling those words against her skin as they finally spilled out of him with the same reckless abandon that his release demanded._

"_Love… you and me, Bones, just you and me, love…"_

_She held onto him tightly when he collapsed backwards onto the bed, his legs still dangling helplessly over the side of the mattress while she rode him down as he flopped back. His arms sprawled limply at his sides, unable to dredge up the strength to even flex his fingers, and Brennan rested heavily yet comfortably on top of him, her cheek pillowed just below the jut of his collarbone, idly stroking and soothing the smooth skin of his right pectoral while she listened to their heartbeats drumming together, answering the call of the other, and later she would barely remember mumbling the word "love" before her eyes drifted shut for the rest that her body suddenly demanded._


	12. Just a Little Bit of Us

Alright guys, I am so sorry for the repost of the last chapter. I was rushing out the door to the airport when I went to post this and I must have put in the wrong chapter, so here is what was meant to be posted that last time. And now that I'm back from vacation, I am fast at work on the next chapter which shouldn't take nearly so long to post. As always, thank you so much to those who are reading, and especially to those who take the time to review. My time is limited so I am truly glad to know that it is not wasted. The response to the last chapter was absolutely astounding, so thank you and I will try to continue in that vein. The next chapter will be the departure, and then it'll be a whole new ballgame for B&B so stick with me on this.

PS - the movie quote is from the movie "The Sandlot" in case anyone is curious.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

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_As her mind slowly came back into itself, meticulously cataloguing each physical and emotional sensation one by one as they were recognized and acknowledged, she was only fully aware of how utterly content her body felt as she lay draped over the warm, quiet form of her lover, though for once she wasn't thinking of oxytocin and vasopressin as she shifted her cheek against his skin and flexed her fingers where they rested over his strongly beating heart. Instead she carefully took note of the light tickling in the pit of her stomach, the way her blood seemed to flutter as it filtered through the chambers of her heart, and the soft heat that pillowed her body as his chest rose and fell beneath her with his deep, even breaths._

_She stroked his chest with increased vigor as the smooth pattern of his breathing changed ever so slightly, wakefulness adding a slight rattle to the lungs beneath her as his conscious mind began its usurping shift back into power._

"_Booth?"_

"_Hmmm?"_

_She smiled softly at the headiness in his voice, feeling that grumble vibrate against her lips as she pressed a quick kiss to his sternum._

"_Booth, wake up," she pressured quietly, tilting her head to rest her chin on his chest so that she could look at his face while her hand snaked up to stroke the side of his throat with curious fingers. Her smile widened when she saw that his head was still thrown back against the comforter, giving her a downward view of his chin and his nose while the angle shielded his eyes from her._

_He sighed heavily, and brought his hands up to her shoulders where he let his fingertips stroke her skin in slow, drugging circles._

"_Damn, but you wore me out there, Bones," he mumbled, his eyelids fluttering as he struggled to open them._

"_I can see that," she said, resting her cheek once again rest against his warm chest. "Though I believe it would actually be your own fault if you are looking to assign blame."_

_His chest rumbled with force of his soft, gravelly laughter, his hands sliding down the small of her back, his fingers splaying across the dipping curve of her spine while he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of her pressed so bare and intimate against him, every muscle in his body sagging in response the utter relaxing calm he sensed in hers._

"_Hmmm, I'm not even sure if I can feel my legs," he mumbled contentedly._

_He felt her body shift slightly against him right before she pinched the outside of his thigh. Hard._

"_Bones, what the hell?" he whined gruffly, lifting his head to glare down at her._

_She pulled herself upwards until she was level with his face, staring down at him before lowering her head to capture his lips softly. "I was just testing your sensatory reflexes, Booth. It is important to make sure that there is no long term damage to your nerves--"_

"_Okay, okay, I get it. You're hilarious, Bones, seriously, you're the funniest person ever," he grumbled at her, though the curve of his lips betrayed his humor, and he couldn't resist brushing his lips across hers even while he snarked dramatically at her physiological rant._

"_Humor is subjective, Booth. That claim would be impossible to prove even if—"_

_He rolled his eyes and kissed her again, tunneling his fingers deep into the hair at the base of her skull as he pulled her down to meet his languorous assault. _

"_I told you that I have learned to be quite amusing," she continued easily when he released her lips._

"_I know, I know. God forbid science can't prove something satisfactorily. The world would come to a freakin' halt, wouldn't it?" he mumbled against her mouth before placing a soft peck against her upper lip._

"_I'm glad you are beginning to see reason," she said, patting his chest with mock accomplishment._

"_That your mission now, Doctor? Making this old Philistine a learned individual?" he teased._

"_Yes."_

_Booth just smiled softly to himself, remembering a time early on in their partnership when she had unabashedly declared that she liked to get in the last word of any argument. Well, if it made her happy, he mused…_

_He gave an exaggerated huff and groaned as he struggled to push himself and Brennan back up into a sitting position. When he had managed to get them upright, he wrapped his arms firmly around her, holding her close against his intimate embrace while he hugged her tighter and pushed his face into the curve of her neck with a heavy, hot sigh. His stomach fluttered slightly as her arms curled over his shoulders, one hand smoothing calmingly over the breadth of his back while the other sifted almost playfully through his hair. He loved the way she touched him so freely now, wondering how he had ever thought he was content to live without it before._

_He wondered how he was going to manage without it when he was gone._

_With another weighted breath, Booth pushed himself to his feet until they were both standing by the edge of her bed, both of them still exposed and vulnerable in each other's arms while he stroked the curve of her shoulder with reverent fingers before pulling away and reaching for the clothing that lay discarded on the floor. She didn't move as he shoved his foot into the crumpled leg of his jeans and then the other, working the denim up over his hips as he fumbled to adjust his boxers beneath the heavier material. He could feel her watching him again, her gaze steady, unreadable but not blank, and Booth swore that he could feel a tangible caress in the way she studied him, completely focused just like she did everything else._

_After snapping the fastening on his jeans, he brought himself up to his full height and faced her, stretching his spine hesitantly and rolling his shoulders to loosen muscles that were starting to feel the slight taxing strain of the day's overexertions. He let his hands come to rest on his hips, and he cocked his head softly to the side, studying her face with equal tenacity as he let his eyes flitter across her features, memorizing the parts of the whole that came together so perfectly to create the woman before him. She was seemingly, and he did not doubt, honestly unfazed by his inspective attentions, returning them with blatant fervor, and he did not miss when her eyes flicked to his chest and then down to the teasing front of his jeans for just the briefest of moments before returning to his face._

_He gave her a small smile, trying his damnedest to ignore the sinking weight that he felt bottoming out in the pit of his stomach as he bent down to retrieve the pile of her clothing and handed it to her. She looked at him questioningly then, but Booth's answer was quick on the draw._

"_Let's get out of here," he said, giving her a small smile that felt twistingly genuine. "There's somewhere I'd like to take you."_

_She cocked her head slightly, and he could see in the firmness of her gaze that she was struggling to read him accurately. This sort of thing was difficult for her, he knew. She struggled with reading between the lines and picking up the subtle cues that most others took for granted as part of their baser instinct. But Brennan didn't take anything for granted. She was a scientist, a woman of trial and error and irrefutable evidence, and so she read deeper into things, sometimes maybe too deep, and trusted in only the measurability of the world around her._

_Booth knew that she never missed the clues, knew that she was cataloguing everything about him at the moment as she worked to understand everything that neither of them was vocalizing. He knew that she was noticing the unusual and out of character silence that had once again settled between them, the way his muscles twitched involuntarily now and then in response to her presence as his baser animal flaunted his attraction while the man in him was focused only on the jumping tick that was pinching his gut, sending him messages that, for once, he had no idea how to read and wasn't sure how to trust._

_He could see everything in her eyes, the hesitant curiosity, the questions that he knew were brewing and to which she had every right to demand answers from him. And he could see that she wouldn't ask any of them. That steep learning curve of hers had solidified the consequences of a verbal misstep inside her brain over the passed few hours, and it looked like Brennan was taking no chances._

_The words they'd already spoken, and, he admitted guiltily, the awful way he'd handled things, had given her pause, made her afraid to breathe her words to life lest the result be exactly what it had been for the passed day… total disaster._

_It felt as though they were both balancing together on the same high-wire, lending each other their weight to maintain their steadiness, each reluctant to breathe lest they jar the other and send both of them crashing down to where there was no safety net waiting to catch them. The only safety that either of them had, the only thing they could trust and the only thing with the power to break them… was each other._

_He realized suddenly that the only time she hadn't seemed at all hesitant was when she was in his arms, when their bodies were locked together primordially and honestly and he couldn't run or hide from her, when they were joined in a way that defied their fears and embraced their most instinctive desires. The only time she was certain now was when he was under her hands and under her spell, drugged and docile under the waves their combined heat and their passion, and while a very large part of him hated that he had made this ever-brutally direct woman feel the need to hide behind discretion and subtly, he had no idea how else to proceed._

_Never once had he imagined that this was how things would be if they ever finally came together as lovers, as more than "just partners," and he wondered if under other circumstances, would they be this hesitant around one another? Would there always have been that awkwardness of transition as they made that irreversible shift into the last private shadows of one another's lives? If this had happened in any other way, would he still have been terrified that this change between them would only ever get to be a temporary one?_

_He didn't believe so. In the pit of his stomach, he didn't believe that she would have ever run from him or from "them" once that final barrier had been crossed. Booth had no doubt that she'd have calculated the odds of "them" up one side of the street and down the other before she ever acted upon any instinctual desires; there would be no thoughtlessness to her passions once she decided to share them with him. And Brennan was never one to live her life in regret or in reverse; she moved forward in everything she did. It seemed that even as her job and her passion encompassed sifting through the wreckage of past horrors, she never let that portion of her life leak into her own. She was a bridge burner by nature because it just wasn't logical to dwell on regret when there was nothing for it._

_The past could not be altered, so there was no reason to dwell once the moment passed. It simply wasn't rational._

_He was fairly certain that the only decisions that she had ever truly looked back on had been those made by others, those life altering decisions that had been thrust upon her with little regard for her own wishes, whether well-meaning or not. But even then she never wallowed in "what if's" the way most did._

_That just wasn't Brennan._

_She gave him a quick, acquiescent nod and then went about dressing, slipping on her jeans and then pulling her sweater over her head while he stood there, watching and memorizing ever movement as if it were the most graceful motion he'd ever seen, utterly and unabashedly fascinated, his chest swelling and tightening against the sobbing delirium of disbelief that he was struggling to hold in check, only allowing himself to vent through soft, thick sighs now and then when the pressure turned gloriously unbearable. He couldn't identify the emotions roiling through him, though the mixture was potent and heavy and cliffhangingly satisfying, like the ground had opened up beneath his feet and instead of death it had blessed him with the gift of flight. It was so much more than love, that word that he'd invested so much of himself in suddenly seeming wholly inadequate and insufficient to the thickening of his tongue and the electricity charring his veins._

_After she had successfully tugged her sweater into place and combed her fingers through her hair to gain some semblance of control, Booth sauntered closer to her, smiling softly as he caught her face in his hands._

_Brennan smiled back at him, and he barely registered the relief in her gentle, close-lipped sigh as he pressed his lips to hers in soft reassurance that he was absolutely where he wanted most to be, doing exactly what he ached for as their mouths slanted and tangled with slow, tender affirmation of what they had finally been able to express in thorough, silent honesty between themselves. He pulled her lower lip between his one last time, letting his fingers slip to the long curve of her neck as hers smoothed up the bare expanse of his chest, coaxing goosebumps from his flesh._

"_Quit trying to distract me," he mumbled against her mouth._

_She grinned broadly, still pressed against him as she grazed his abdominals with her nails. "I'm doing nothing of the sort."_

_She fiddled with the catch of his zipper, flicking it with nimble fingers. He knew what she wanted then, knew that she was hoping to postpone the moment with another more pleasant distraction, but Booth held himself in check, unwilling to give in just yet because he didn't want their coupling to be at all about distraction. _

_He chuckled softly. "Yeah, feels like a whole lot 'a nothing." He groaned and dropped his hands to grip her hips, tipping her pelvis tightly into his as he swayed gently to a smooth, rolling rhythm. _

"_That doesn't feel like nothing to me," she murmured against his throat, entranced by the delicious heat that misted between them._

"_Wasn't being literal, Bones." He pressed a kiss to her forehead before he pushed himself away from her with a hard sigh, snatching his shirt off the floor and forcing himself into it before his libido had a chance to talk him out of it, a not so small part of his testosterone-riddled brain wondering why the hell they were wasting any of their precious time not being sweaty and naked._

_He gave her a playful shove towards the bedroom door, and she snagged his hand, quickly entwining their fingers as she yanked him into the hallway behind her. They took turns pulling and pushing each other, nudging shoulders as they fought their way into their shoes once they made it to the living room, Booth blowing surreptitious puffs of air into her ear as she bent over next to him to adjust her heel comfortably. She shot him a scathing look and rubbed her earlobe._

_He did it again, sending a cool burst of air tickling down her ear canal, quickly turning to innocently study his laces when her glare turned on him again, her eyes narrowing even while her lips twitched._

"_Knock it off, Booth," she said warningly._

_He grinned toothily to himself as he tightened the laces on his second sneaker, watching her out of the corner of his eye for his next moment of attack. When her gaze turned back to the last knot she was tying, he ambushed quickly, twisting his head to blow another tickling puff into her ear._

_However, Brennan had anticipated this attack. Turning her own head, she caught his lips mid-pucker, and what was meant to be a teasing peck to bring a halt to his deviousness ended up a little longer and a little wetter than she'd planned as they were unable to resist sipping and tasting one another._

_Pulling away breathlessly, Booth gave her a crooked smile. "That's some punishment there, Bones. Remind me to piss you off more often."_

_Grinning widely, she leaned forward as if to whisper something to him, and with Booth expecting sexy little nothings in his ear, he was shocked when she plunged her tongue into his ear._

_Leaping upright, he rubbed the side of his head furiously with the heel of his hand._

"_Jesus, Bones, warn a guy, would ya?"_

_Brennan laughed to herself, fisting the lapels of the jacket he'd thrown on and planting a mildly apologetic kiss on his lips._

"_That would defeat the purpose, Booth," she said rationally._

_He rolled his eyes, and pushed her in the direction of the door. "Get a move on, woman, before I end up dragging you back the way we came," he growled._

_She raised an eyebrow at him. "That is perfectly acceptable."_

_He groaned and rolled his head back on his shoulders as he pulled the door shut behind them and locked it. "'You're killing me, Smalls.'"_

"_What's small?"_

"_Nevermind. Movie quote."_

"_Oh… just as long as it's not Benjamin Franklin, I suppose," she said, scrunching her nose with displeasure._

_Booth laughed heartily, squeezing her hand as he brought it up to his lips to brush a kiss against her knuckles, remembering how amusing it had been to see Brennan weirded out by someone, wearing that comical expression that most unfamiliar people wore around her. "Never change, Bones."_

_She turned her head to him, confused. "What would I change into, Booth? I mean, physically I will change slightly as my age progresses and—"_

"_That's exactly what I'm talking about, Bones. That right there," he interjected, poking her shoulder with an affectionately accusatory finger. "Don't ever stop doing that."_

"_Correcting or expounding on your embellishments and inaccuracies with more precise scientific and anthropological facts?"_

_He chuckled. "Yeah."_

"_Ok," she said easily, shrugging at his bizarrely simple request._

_Together they made their way to the elevator, and after pushing the down button, Booth let his back rest easily against the wall while they waited for the lift, draping his arms loosely around her waist as he smiled down at her, using every ounce of willful repression to hold back the worry and trepidation that he had given up on trying to rid himself of. That sick feeling in the pit of his stomach could sit on the back burner for a few more hours until the ticking clock finally ran out._

"_Booth?"_

"_Hmm?" He glanced down at her as they entered the elevator together._

"_Booth, what happened to your hands?" she asked, lifting one up as she inspected the side of his palm, which he'd forgotten about in the recent chaos, with panic, desperation and passion blocking out the raw, slightly blood-crusted friction burns that he'd gotten from pummeling his bedroom floor in frantic self-hatred during those horrifying minutes that she'd been lost to him._

_She turned his hand over, inspecting the wound gravely as she ran a delicate fingertip over the marred flesh, checking the severity of the rawness that self-abuse had earned him. Her brow knitted together and she frowned, the corners of her lips pursing tightly with displeasure._

"_It's nothing, Bones. I, uh, I just had a bit of a tantrum, that's all," he said casually, shrugging off her concern when he knew full well that he deserved every bit of the discomfort it caused him and then some._

_She was quiet for a few moments, and Booth glanced at her guiltily. She was still staring at the hand that she held tenderly with her own, running her fingers over it as if she hoped to gain answers directly from his wounds so that she wouldn't have to take the risk of asking him directly._

"_I couldn't find you, Bones," he confessed quietly. "After… after the cemetery, after I fucked up, I went looking for you, and I tried back at my apartment but…" he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he struggled to collect his thoughts._

"_I saw the bed and the crumpled sheets, but you weren't there and I… I didn't handle it very well, I guess," he shrugged._

"_I wasn't there because I did not think you would want me there, Booth. I needed to think things over."_

"_I wanted you there, Bones. Every minute, every second that I didn't know where you were I was driving myself crazy. And… I didn't mean it, Bones. What I said… on that bench when you said, when you, when you asked… I didn't mean what I said," he said gruffly, embarrassed by both his words and the stupidity that had created the need for them._

_Brennan touched his forearm lightly. "Let's not talk about that, Booth. I'd rather just let that go."_

_He nodded, relieved but ashamed that she was giving him a pass on an apology that he knew she damn well deserved._

"_I'm sorry, Bones. Really."_

"_I know, Booth."_

_They were silent as they stepped out of the elevator together, though Brennan had not relinquished his hand and had now threaded her fingers with his, squeezing just a little tighter when Booth pushed open the front door to the apartment building and they were met with the cold burst of D.C. winter air. The SUV was still parked on the street where he'd hurriedly and carelessly left it before in his panic, and Brennan's eyebrows rose in shock when she slid into the passenger seat and glanced over to find the driver's side window a shattered mess of fractured glass and jagged edges._

"_Booth?"_

_He shrugged, not really wanting to talk about it in too much detail. "I couldn't find the keys, and I was… in a hurry," he mumbled as he leaned down between his knees to find the wires that he would need to hopefully jumpstart the car to life again. He wrote himself a mental note that they needed to return to his own apartment at some point to collect Brennan's car from where it was still parked since that fateful night of discarded Chinese food and crossed lines._

_Throwing the truck into drive, Booth pulled out into the street and sped off in a familiar direction, painfully aware of the sky darkening with late afternoon, evening soon upon them as the gray misty light threatened them with the darkness of advancing night, stealing away yet more of their precious, dwindling grains of the hourglass. The snowfall had halted for the time being, though the wetness still clung to the soft breeze and the chill had not relented in the slightest, the dismalness of the weather seemingly determined to stay._

_Booth pulled up outside The Diner with no preamble, gliding into a parking space and cutting the engine, his hands flexing, momentarily nervous, against the steering wheel before he turned his eyes to where Brennan sat in the passenger seat, watching him curiously._

"_This is where you wanted to bring me? I don't understand, Booth, we come here all the time. What—"_

"_Yeah, Bones, that's my point," he interrupted. "I thought… I dunno, I was thinking that, maybe this, ya know, something that's just "us" might be good for us. No pressure, you know? Just plain, old Booth and Bones?" He scratched the back of his head and let his eyes drop to the dashboard, hoping that this was just the dumbest idea he'd yet to conjure._

"_Booth and Bones?" she asked, her voice laced with a hesitant understanding._

"_Yeah," he agreed softly, reaching across the console to take her hand, brushing her knuckles with his thumb. "Just us. Ya know, take a step back and just breathe for a moment?"_

"_Oh."_

_He didn't miss the tense disappointment in her soft voice._

"_Hey," he urged, leaning across the seat until his face hovered above hers. "Not that far back." _

_He smiled as he pushed his lips against hers, willing her to understand what it was he was trying to accomplish, that he wanted to give them a break from all the stress and strain of the coming morning, a break that he wanted them to take together rather than at odds, or worse… apart._


	13. Slip Right Through

Here's the last flashback chapter, finally now that the uploader seems to be working again! I hope this lives up to everyone's expectations. This chapter was particularly difficult to write and had me agonizing over it for quite some time, so any feedback would really help me out here cause of all the chapters thus far, this one is pivotal in that the emotions we end with here really set up the events of the reconciliation... let's just say it's gonna be a bit dramatic, just a fair warning lol... anyway, enjoy and as always thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_It was awkward but strangely comforting, Booth decided, sitting there in The Diner at their usual table, eating the same food that they always got and having the same old beautifully mundane conversations that they always had. There was a certain amount of reassurance in the familiarity of the moment, with their bodies separated by the intervening table, their legs crossed and tucked under each of their respective seats, both maintaining that air of distance that gave no hint to the raw carnal knowledge that now settled irrevocably between them. They had been there before… but they had never _been here_ before. They acted just as they always had inside the safety of their local haunt, and Booth was fairly certain that they probably were still radiating that distressing sexual tension of which they had so often been accused, even if now it was being held in check by an entirely different motive from an entirely different audience._

_But the more familiar he tried to feel, the more uncertain he started to feel too. And he had no idea why._

_Was it wrong to desire normalcy? He didn't think so. But it felt wrong just the same._

_Nothing seemed to explain why he felt unbalanced, somehow tainted by his desire to turn back the clock and feeling oddly unfaithful to the people they were now in his effort to push them back into the roles of the people they had been only the day before._

_He wanted things to be normal between them, or at least as normal as possible and only for a moment, just long enough to fill his lungs with an easy breath, something he had been unable to do since the moment their partnership had spilled haphazardly into his bedroom, destroying the air of suppression on impact. After several years of denial, total open honesty somehow seemed harder than he'd imagined. He was desperate to remind each of them that no matter what had transpired between them, the rest of the world remained peacefully unchanged and unaffected… that they hadn't lost any of the things that had been so great between them before sex had replaced their infamous self-denial and painful self-control._

_That some things in the world still balanced as they were ought to…_

_They couldn't undo the knowledge they now possessed of each other, couldn't unlearn those darkly sincere passions or clandestine desires; they had both broken and shattered together, and regardless of the consequences, it was now their burden to bear… whether they bore it together or not, they were now unavoidably gifted with the punishment of what they had done. They couldn't go back to the time when they didn't know each other "that way," and they could not hide behind stuttering corrections and indignance anymore._

_But for just the briefest of moments, he traitorously wished that things might be that simple._

_Booth tossed a fidgety glance over his shoulder towards the door as his fist gripped the warm ceramic coffee mug. He could practically see the bridges burning behind them, their entwined pasts set aflame and the future so dark and uncertain, leaving him too afraid of disappointment to recognize that glimmer of hope inside the gloom._

_He sighed and struggled to make the tightening line of his mouth to loosen casually, letting his spine uncurl against the back of the padded booth while he draped his arm across the top ridge of the bench with forced nonchalance. _

_Brennan still wasn't talking to him. Or rather she was speaking, but nothing real was being said. They were just words, falling aimlessly from her lips to no real point or purpose while her eyes skittered across his features in the desperate attempt to read and interpret and anticipate him. He flinched inwardly._

_Their anxieties were fueling each other on, radiating like magnetic waves between them, much as their passions had done shortly before as they absorbed and responded to the subtle queues of the other in a way that only a long past and infinitely deep trust can evoke. Booth knew he was the more sensitive of the two when it came to labeling emotion. Brennan felt everything just as he did, true, but she was less familiar with identifying those irrationalities within herself and others, and given her avid distaste for speculation, she only knew two ways to respond to insecurity. Forcibly dismiss it as irrational and therefore unnecessary… or attack it head on, usually in the form blunt, tactless questioning with little reservation for sensitivity. Despite her many other skills, diplomacy just wasn't Brennan's thing._

_Booth had surprised himself that first time that he had, albeit silently, admitted that it was a quality that he loved most._

_Now he found that he could settle for nothing less. Her trustworthy straightforwardness was the real missing comfort he needed. Her unquestionably rude honesty the only thing that felt familiar to him anymore._

_And her current hedging deference to anything that she seemed to suddenly consider a verbal landmine was unnerving the hell out of him._

"_Bones," he interjected sharply, cutting her off midsentence, his own anxiety adding an unintended edge to his voice._

_Her lips caught and swallowed the rest of her current thought, and Booth could see the tension drawing back her shoulders slightly as she immediately began to mentally replay her words, searching for that moment where her careful concentration had faltered._

"_Bones," he said again, softer this time. "It's okay… really. Just talk to me, Bones. Please. Like you normally would, okay? No kid gloves, huh?"_

"_What?"_

"_Talk to me," he repeated slowly, his dark eyes boring into hers from across plain of Formica and empty plates between them. He wanted so badly to reach over and touch her, but his body remained rigidly frozen on his side of the table, waiting for he-had-no-idea-what._

_He couldn't seem to loosen the muscles that were clenched and knotted along his spine, the physical discomfort putting him on edge almost as much as the indiscernible anxiety that prickled at the base of his skull. Every breath, every second that ticked by was another precious moment gone that he knew he'd never get back, leaving each minute more important than the next as he struggled to leave things right between them in the little time they had left. There was a conclusion looming on the horizon, an ending of whatever was between them, and whether it was temporary or not, he couldn't seem to reconcile himself to the fact that the following morning would see them, his fear believed irreversibly, parted from one another. With a touch of masochism, he imagined briefly what it would feel like to slip away from her sleeping arms and disappear into the still-dark morning, wondering why it suddenly felt as though duty was forcing him to sneak villainously away from their bed and away from where honor would have rightly left him._

_His fingers drummed nervously against his knee as his leg bounced rapidly beneath the table with unbridled agitation. Booth didn't like that honor and duty no longer seemed to be synonymous inside his head, things that he'd never once questioned as right and just suddenly blurred by uncertainty, giving him yet another puzzle to worry over when he still hadn't worked out this Rubik's matrix with Brennan. The faith that he'd always had within himself, his trust that he was the kind of man that would strive against his own desires to do what was right suddenly didn't seem as black and white as it always had, that faith in his abilities wavering as he realized that he was no longer sure what was right and what was wrong._

_Booth was a born soldier. And for the first time, he took no pride or relish in that knowledge of who he was._

_Through all the years and all the lives he'd taken, he'd always been able to bear the weight of what he'd done because he believed, truly and honestly within his heart, that it was in the name of justice… that the scars on his soul were not without purpose. That his evils were outweighed by the good that his actions had caused. He had never questioned or hesitated in his duty to his country, proud to serve because however frightening or disheartening it had ever been, at the end of it all, it had been done for good reasons in the battle against the darker side of mankind and the inevitabilities of human cruelty._

_And he still believed that. He still felt honor in what he had once upon a time sacrificed for justice. And for all its pains, he would not change it._

_But now everything was different. It didn't feel the same as the last time that he'd gone marching off to war, young and naïve and nervous but deeply proud of what he discovered himself willing to trade in the name of righteousness. _

_This time around it felt wrong, not in what he was being asked to do but in what he was being forced to leave behind, like he was being forced to give up something he shouldn't, something that nothing in the world had the right to take from him… something of which there was no sacrifice worthy of what he was trading… what he was losing._

_And yet the morning would see him gone, from her bed, from her arms, from her kiss, her life… and the darkest corner of his mind wondered how many more mornings it would be before he was gone from her heart as well. She loved him, he both knew and trusted that she did, with more than enough passion and longing to rival his own, but he was already feeling faded and tired from the strain of past day. And he wondered when that piece of the soul that he'd given her would be as faded as he felt right then, when it was all too much to bear and a numbing façade seemed like a liberating relief from the torture that he was putting her through._

_With no malice, he admitted that for him there would never be a façade to replace her, not with his body, not with his heart, but he would never begrudge her the same loneliness to which he had already decided to condemn himself, telling himself that he would live happy in the knowledge that just for the briefest of moments, she had welcomed him into her heart, whether she ever view it that way or not. She could keep her science if it comforted her. Booth knew that he had touched her heart, regardless of any others that came after him._

_He wanted to leave things right between them, but he wasn't sure if that was even possible because in the end, he was still leaving. He was leaving her, his partner, his best friend… and now his lover because he'd been unable to deny himself those few hours of fulfillment. And if he couldn't make it right, he wondered if there was even a way for him to make it less wrong in the very least._

_She had said that she wanted this, that she wanted "them" for however long they lasted, but that knowledge did little to dissuade the guilt that continued to plague him as every word brought them closer to good-bye. He felt like they had lived a lifetime between them in the passed few hours, that they had come so far from what they had been when he'd come to her in the lab to deliver a lunch invitation and bad news. And against his will but still at his feet was the knowledge that _he_ was ending them. The only thing he could think to do was give her whatever she wanted of him before he left._

_If she wanted him, then he would give himself to her and call himself a coward and a traitor later when he had only duty and self-deprecation for company._

_Brennan's eyebrow quirked as she regarded him cautiously. "I am talking to you, Booth," she said slowly, clearly unsure of his meaning._

_Bones didn't really do 'between the lines.' yet another quality that he found himself in love with for its rarity._

_Booth shook his head and sighed. Leaning forward, he reached across the table, his fingers twitching hesitantly above her own where they rested on the smooth surface before he finally, slowly began to smooth the tip of his middle finger over her knuckles, his gaze dropping to watch as he stroked the back of her hand in hypnotic circles._

"_You're hedging, Bones. That's not like you at all," he pushed gently._

"_While it's true that I can be somewhat abrasive in my social approach, I don't think it's accurate to say I'm 'hedging'—"_

"_I don't like that I've made you nervous of me," Booth said quietly, his eyes darting back up to her startled face before dropping again to where he was still tracing her long, slender fingers with the calloused tip of his own._

_Brennan shook her head avidly. "I'm not afraid of you."_

_He smiled sadly, decidedly comforted by the complete honesty in her voice if not by her words._

"_I know. But you _are_ nervous of me."_

_Her eyebrows bunched together and she leaned forward slightly in her seat, her gaze focused and intensely studying the tick that had returned to the corner of his squared jaw._

"_There's a difference?" she asked disbelievingly._

_He nodded absently, slipping his fingers under hers so that he cupped her hand, continuing his caress with his thumb._

"_Yeah. There's a difference."_

"_Booth," she said sharply, urging his eyes back up to hers, noticing that they were hooded and glazed with an almost relaxed defeat that squeezed her chest muscles so tight that her ribs strangled and her heart beat faster with apprehension. She didn't at all like the look of sad acceptance he wore just a little too easily. _

"_Booth, I'm not afraid of you. I'm not nervous of you. This… This situation is hard on both of us. I'm just trying to figure out what to do."_

_He said nothing for a long while, his eyes hardened and glossy like frozen oil as silence spilled from him and filled the air between them. Their gaze never broke, never wavered, but after almost two full minutes Brennan stopped expecting an answer to the question that she hadn't really asked._

"_What are you afraid of, Temperance?" he asked suddenly, his stoic voice beginning to turn brittle with exhaustion._

_She considered him carefully, jostled slightly by the loss of her name as she took in the weathered appearance of his handsome face and the added years that had seemed to spring from somewhere deep and hidden, down in that place where he had so cautiously wormed away everything that he was ashamed to let other see of himself. Brennan knew that he kept things from her, just as there were parts of herself that she had never dared to reveal to even him, not just out of a lack of trust but also the fear of having to hear herself saying those things aloud when she would inevitably butcher them in the pathetic attempt. Even in her head she struggled to grasp for the right words that, she was frustrated to admit, she knew her lips had no hope of finding. _

_But she remembered back to that moment at the tentative but sure birth of their partnership, back at a time before their often savage arguments had faded into the heated but respectful bickering that they were now. She remembered what he had said about the give-and-take of things. How if she wanted him to give her anything of himself, he would demand no less from her…_

_And so she battled reluctantly against her pride and her defensive trepidation, wanting more than anything to find the words to let herself be honest with him._

_Booth watched her as she dissected the probing question he'd thrown at her, his expression decidedly neutral while his pulse was anything but. He didn't expect her to answer. He expected an argument, a denial of abstract fears as irrational and unproductive. He expected everything except…_

"_Being forgotten." Her voice was hard but finally honest, and he could tell that those two words were difficult for her to say aloud, and not just to him._

"_Bones…" he breathed, his heartbeat threatening to stop with a thunderous pop._

_Her eyes were suddenly glistening, her brave tears unshed but not concealed. Lacing the fingers of her captive hand with his, she squeezed hard and swallowed._

"_Are you going to forget me, Booth?"_

_That question rang so familiar, so much like it had the last time when she'd asked if he was going to betray her, and he couldn't help but respond exactly as he had then._

"_No."_

"_You did once. It could happen again," she said quietly. A single tear dared to escape, rolling down her cheek as he reached forward with his other hand to brush it gently away with the pad of his thumb._

_He shook his head, his eyes unflinching as they burned themselves onto her own steady gaze._

"_I never forgot you, Bones. I may have forgotten about crazy socks and brown sugar and everything else about who I am, but you were always there. By another name, in another life, with another job… but you were always you, Bones. I always remembered _you_._

"_The only thing I forgot was that you weren't mine."_

_Her eyes shimmered beneath the fluorescent lighting, so blue and welling with emotion that both pained and thrilled him to see, and he nearly melted with relief when she placed her other hand on their entwined fingers and quietly asked him to take her home._

_Booth called a cab as they waited for the check, and then he called a local mechanic to have the SUV towed and the window repaired before it was returned to the FBI headquarters building, the same building where he'd left his gun and his resignation after the initial shock of the letter had worn off. He had told his boss that he would request to be reinstated upon his return… that this solution just kept the paperwork to a minimum. He hoped that he hadn't been lying at the time, but he couldn't' really be sure._

_They waited outside The Diner for the cab to arrive, Booth still clutching her hand with their arms now linked and her head resting pillowed against his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, and he could tell by the slowing of her breaths that she was just barely conscious enough to stay standing, a fellow victim to the emotional exhaustion that the long day had caused them. When they were safely tucked inside the backseat of the cab, he gave the address to his apartment and then let his head drop to rest his cheek against the top of her head, hovering between those lulling lines of sleep and awareness where his brain still registered to thrumming engine and the bumps in the road but only with that secondary buzz of consciousness. Asleep for ten or fifteen seconds then jarred just shy of awake for another few before the cycle started over again._

_This continued all the way back to the apartment, his thoughts fluttering between what he should do and what he knew he would do anyway. He stroked his fingers gently back and forth across her forearm where it was wrapped protectively over her abdomen, needing to touch her in order to keep his thoughts from taking him over completely. He'd already made that mistake, and he wasn't about to do the same again. He'd let them fester as they would in the back of his mind, letting his solitary focus fall solely on the woman in his arms, thinking how irreplaceable her love was to him._

_He could tell she was asleep, her face buried in the crook of his neck where he'd coaxed her into resting, her parted lips releasing her soothingly calm breaths against his throat in hot little puffs, drugging him into delirium. Every breath filled his nose with her scent, her hair tickling his lips, and suddenly forgetting about tomorrow didn't seem quite so difficult._

_He nudged her awake as they came to halt by the curb, pressing a soft kiss against her forehead as she lifted bleary eyes towards him, and he watched as her brain struggled to bring him into focus. His chest swelling with the sudden primal and instinctive male need to protect and care for her, he shifted his weight carefully as he slowly uncoiled his body, stretching his long legs as he swung them slowly out the door and dragged her out with him. She was surprisingly not resistant to his guidance, although he suspected that it mostly had to do with the utter exhaustion he could still see darkening her eyes. If she were more awake, he knew he'd never get away with this level cosseting._

_They held each other up as they dragged their heavy bodies and heavier footsteps up the stairs to his place, propping against one another for more than just the simple excuse of needing to be touched, both of them suddenly and strangely feeling the unfamiliar urge to fall pliant and be carried by the unerring support of their lovers' arms. It was a sensation that neither was accustomed to, neither one mentioning the desire aloud for fear of crippling their pride, despite that they both knew they weren't hiding that need very well._

_Booth unlocked the door and they quietly slipped inside, the only sound being the soft click of the lock as he flipped the deadbolt and the resounding shuffle of tired footfalls on old wood planks. He didn't bother with the light switch, preferring the intimacy of the darkening shadows as the night was finally full upon them, though the moonlight that filtered in through the windows was more than enough to see by. _

_She turned to look at him in the entryway, his expression tired and his slumping shoulders a dead giveaway of his exhaustion and the mental anguish that she knew he would be punishing himself with despite the little smile he cast her way as their eyes met across the dark. Reaching out to her, he brushed his fingertips over the arch of her cheek, as if to paint her further with the silver light that advanced the pale of her alabaster skin and gave her eyes the glistening rich swirl of liquefied steel._

_Brennan seemed to wake up a bit as the bolt snapped into place, sealing them safely inside for the night. Her eyes brightened slightly with recognition under his loving touch, and she reached up for his hand and kissed his wrist._

_Their last night, she thought sadly… _

_But it was still only early into the night, and dawn was still safely on the other side of the world as the planet turned them slowly towards a sad good-bye. The next few hours with him still belonged to her, and she rationalized that it was illogical to waste the moment with thoughts of the inevitable… like death, fearful trepidation and obsessive worry would do nothing to stall the flow of time towards that unavoidable end. There was always time for mourning._

_There was never enough of 'now.'_

"_Can we go to bed now, Booth?" she asked softly._

_He nodded and smiled with just the corner of his mouth, but it never quite reached his eyes for all his effort. "Sure thing, Bones. I know you're tired."_

"_I am."_

_She gave him a strange look, one that he couldn't quite place but felt that he should know, and then she turned away and started off down the hall to his bedroom, pulling him gently along by the hand, her touch soft and loose as if to let him know that it was okay to break away at any time… that she would accept it if he did. Even though she wanted him to follow._

_Booth clutched her hand tighter, silently reassuring her that he was still there with her._

_Once inside the bedroom, she released him and moved over to the window, pushing it open slightly so that they could hear the air whistle gently through the crack in the glass. Booth watched her for a moment before glancing down at the messy bed, the sheets still tangled and the comforter still shoved down by the foot of the mattress with the pillows skewed every which way. He gave a slow smile at the quaint scene it presented, feeling none of the agony that had filled him the last time he had seen the blatant reminders of their heated lovemaking and tenderly unspoken words now that she was back there with him to soothe away that bitter regret. He sighed as he leaned down to smooth out the creases. Not that he was necessarily bothered by them, he thought to himself with a mental shrug. But there were always new wrinkles to make._

_He lifted his head to glance at her for a moment as he stripped down to his boxers and carelessly kicked his clothes aside before lifting the sheets and sliding under the comforter. He shuffled around until he found a comfortable position on his back, one arm folded behind his head while the other draped casually over his navel where the sheet rode down low on his hips. The cool air kissed the most delicious gooseflesh onto his naked chest, and he enjoyed the slight shiver that rattled some of the kinks in his muscles loose._

_His eyes closed for just a moment, trying to feel nothing except the soft breeze against his flesh as undeniable weariness licked at him in gentle wisps, but then he felt the bed dip next to him, the cool air being replaced by radiating warmth as she scooted in close to him and laid her palm upon his heartbeat. He brought his hand up from his abdomen to cover hers and tilted his head to look at her across the gap between his pillow and hers, immediately noticing how her eyes glistened and twinkled beneath their heavy, hooded lids._

_He smiled at her tenderly._

"_I thought you were tired," he mumbled, having trouble keeping his eyes open despite the temptation of her face._

"_I am," she repeated with a soft breath, looking at him with dark eyes drugged with heady requisition and fatigue. _

_When her eyes closed, he thought that she'd fallen asleep. He smiled softly and closed his eyes as well, tucking his head deeper into the crook of his arm with a dogged, rueful sigh, reluctantly giving in to her almost hesitant appeal for rest. But then he felt a rustle next to him and the brush of heat against his shoulder where she had her lips pressed against him. It was a small caress, chaste and innocent and oh so soft as she pursed her mouth against his skin, soothing the round of his shoulder while she wiggled closer to seal every gap between them. Her knee slid over the top of his, pushing her pelvis in tight against his hip, and he realized then that the only barrier between them were the boxers that he'd resigned himself to because she had been absolutely thorough when she'd stripped herself down and slipped into bed._

_He grinned toothily as he lifted his head up slightly off the pillow, peering down at the top of her head as she dragged her lips across his bicep, clutching weakly at his arm with one hand while the other intertwined with his own where they still rested upon his chest. _

_When he didn't move, she continued her journey a little higher to the hypnotic crest of his collarbone, nibbling and tasting and moving slowly but exhaustedly determined against him. Freeing her hand from his, she slipped it lower to smooth her palm back and forth against his navel, opportunistically utilizing her brilliant mind to commit ever coiling and shifting muscle to memory as she stroked and soothed and petted with weary single-mindedness. _

_To look at her, she appeared almost asleep, her body moving of its own accord as its needs differed from the fitful rest that her battle-wearied emotions were screaming for, but she was resolute, her hunger for him indomitable and growing stronger still with ever breath that reminded her that she had so little time left before the traitorous sun rose and stole him away from her._

_As a woman very much acquainted with loss, she knew the hurt that was headed her way. Keenly aware of the ugliness of forced absence, she found herself determined to claim whatever she could while she could. And however much she had argued with him, as a rational woman, realism demanded that she grudgingly admit that he was not wrong to say that there was a chance that this was the last time that she would ever have him. He was going to war, for lack of better words, where every flying bullet statistically decreased the probability of his safe return._

_When her parents had disappeared, her mind had often drifted to what it would have been like to have had just one more day… to have had the prior knowledge that she needed to treasure that time because it would soon be gone forever, and how different that last day would have been if she had. _

_Rationally she knew that nothing would have been different. She still would have woken up abandoned, still would have been tossed carelessly into foster care after her brother left her behind as well. But maybe, she'd always wondered with the most furtive secrecy… maybe that one day would have made the years of solitude just that much easier to bear._

_Temperance Brennan was not a woman to let the mistakes of history repeat themselves. Denying the achy somnolence of her body, she pushed for more, coddling her fears with his heat and the promise of his solid body. Although years of practiced and meticulously constructed self-preservation had part of her brain balking at the unfamiliar wash of sentimentality, a larger, untested part of her squelched that voice immediately, screaming instead that the more memories she catalogued now, the easier recollection would be later when his warmth was just a phantom in her bed and his presence just a dream inside her mind._

_Forcing her heavy eyelids open, she lifted her gaze to find his face in the darkness, her lips still moving softly over his shoulder. He was staring down at her, his expression softening with every delicate touch of her mouth and his eyes black and hooded with latent desire._

_With much effort, she pulled her head up to meet his, pillowing her lips against his in a slow, drugging kiss as she allowed her eyelids to droop, sighing her weariness into him as she tenderly explored._

"_What are you doing?" he asked quietly when they parted._

"_Kissing you," she breathed, leaning in for another, suddenly afraid that if she stilled for too long that exhaustion would slip between them and steal this precious moment from her._

"_I know that. I just thought you were too tired."_

_She lifted her eyes to his, and he was shocked to see the rawness that glimmered there. "That can wait," she mumbled through another kiss. "I am…" collecting data… "making up for lost time."_

_He wondered if she meant the past or the uncertain, rapidly approaching future, trying to read whatever wheels were turning inside her head. But when her mouth returned to his, the softness of her lips cushioning his drove the temptation of the feathery pillow beneath him clear from his mind, and he reckoned that she was right. Sleep could wait._

_Tomorrow would not._

_With a groan, he rolled onto to his side so that he faced her, slipping his arm under her neck so that her head was pillowed on his bicep, his other arm draping possessively around her body as his fingers drifted with aimless purpose over the smooth expanse of her back. She moaned and tipped her head back further to improve the angle of their kiss, mouths opening to their shared heat, jaws working to fit them together in a drugged, dizzying meld of tired but relentless desire._

_Together they worked his boxers over and off his hips before Brennan snuck her hand between them, her eyes closed and her brain fogged, leaving her only hazily aware as she cupped and stroked him into readiness, hungry for those sounds he made while he loved her. Her heart was achingly desperate to be touched again in that way only he seemed to manage every time she invited him to her body. She remembered the envy she had felt once upon a time when he'd explained to her the uniqueness of "making love," a clandestine part of her hoping fervently that one day she would have enough evidence to believe that his claims were true, that they weren't just founded on naïve, pitiless fantasy or romantic hyperbole._

_She had admitted once to Angela, so long ago, that she knew that her efforts of self-preservation were stifling. That her disconnect limited her and forced her to miss out on certain experiences in exchange for the protection it offered._

_But she was tired of missing out._

_She felt as though she had spent the better part of her life missing out on what came so easily to others._

_As she struggled for the strength to pull her leg higher up over his hip, she let her hand fall to the small of his back, urging him forward, silently pleading for his body to fill her with the same lethargic copulation that the slow, dragging pushing of his tongue was gifting to her through his kiss. Exhaustion swept over them, the first roll of his hips, too slow to really be called a thrust, proving more taxing on his strength than he had imagined, and he pulled his head back to look at her, reading that same fatigue in her face that he felt despite the passionate want that flooded him._

"_You sure you're not too tired for this?" he panted against the corner of her mouth, desperately willing his body forward._

"_I'll prove it," she moaned breathlessly, her panting gasps echoing his as she gripped his back harder despite her sapping strength, using her purchase there to propel her own hips into an indolent, lazily-rocking rhythm, unaware of the déjà vu that shook him to the core._

_In the end, the need for one another won out against the lethargy that swept them relentlessly, and although their tempo was sluggish and the languid ghosting of gentle caresses did little to ease the grinding of teeth and clenching of tired, straining muscles as they fought against their bodies to keep going, even the slightest movement taking so much effort, it was the languor of their passions that kept them rooted to one another. As they rocked together, tangled in the spell of the erotic rustling of sweat-dampened sheets, emotional need conquered the physical necessity for rest as they gave what they could, facing each other across the shadows and passing moonlight, eyes squeezed shut with focused concentration centered only on feeling what it felt like when time fell away with irrelevance._

_Together they shoved away loneliness, burying it beneath the avalanche of gentle, desperate friction and the gritty pain of moaning denial._

_The need to not be alone was prevalent, as was the need to be reminded that although it was waning, they still had time left to fill, and that was what kept bringing them rolling back together, wanting every possible second of fitting their bodies together in a way that promised only pleasure and fulfillment as they drowned in the chemicals of arousal and the desperate urge to prolong the pain of their overly taxed muscles._

_Unable to resist the pull that proved stronger than the exhaustion that washed his body with the acidic demand for relief, Booth pushed his eyes open to watch her face, thinking that to die there wrapped around her, under, over and surrounded by nothing else would be the only real mercy. Her brow was tensed and furrowed, her plush lips parted under the strain of her panting little gasps for air, and the sheen of sweat that had broken over her fevered body betrayed her truly desperate need to succumb to the rest she so sorely required but vehemently denied._

_Wind crept in stronger through the open window, rattling the old panes as it billowed in to swirl around the lovers as they struggled for control. Her breath hitched sharply as the cold burst in a sudden swell over her naked back, catching against the moisture that beaded on her skin, chilling her blood even as her fever caught fire. _

_She shivered, the tremors racing up her spine as he whispered, "Stay with me," against her throat, tucking her in firmly against his body, the irony of his plea squeezing somewhere deep inside her chest as she fought back tears._

"_Not yet…"_

_She clung, losing grasp on the slickness of his body as she hooked her heel tighter against his calf._

"_More, please god—"_

"_Stay…"_

_But it was a losing battle, and every soft rocking of their hips took more and more effort until they were visibly struggling against the need to let their finish take them. Pulling from his last reserves of strength, Booth lifted his hand to her face, brushing away a wet curl that had fallen over her eye before his thumb feathered across her lips, tugging gently on the dry, swollen flesh. Her fingers flexed against his side where she clutched him, and she whimpered slightly, fighting valiantly to keep that rhythm between them. He soothed his hand along the length of her body, distracting himself with her curves before he landed on her own hip, mirroring her posture as his nails bit down in the effort to postpone his death a little longer._

_When the end finally came, when their bodies could take no more punishment and they surrendered to the finish that they had staved off for as long as possible, his fingers spasmed as he pulled her hips impossibly tight against his own, his body going rigid with tremors and his eyes riveting to hers. Their panting breaths mingled through the cohesion of quiet moans and heart-beating passion, and already they were sinking into something that surpassed exhaustion and led them eagerly into delirium._

_She clawed at his face with gentle mindlessness, stroking his jaw and his neck as she burrowed her face between his cheek and the pillow beneath him to muffle her sobs of pleasure and hide her overly taxed emotions as they welled and flooded beyond the usually tight grip of her control. Her body quaked violently, apparently rebelling against her efforts to allay the surging deluge of overwhelming sensation that was still so foreign to her._

_Booth locked his arm tightly across her upper back, his fingers coiled around the nape of her neck beneath the tangles of sweat-dampened hair as he hushed and cooed softly in her ear while she struggled to calm her breaths. Finally she tilted her eyes up to him, both of their heads already sinking heavily into their waiting pillows. Her eyes were wet, her lips twisted in a small, hesitant smile._

"_Do you believe me now?" she asked quietly, watching as his closed eyes crinkled along with his tender grin._

"_I'll never doubt you again," he grumbled sleepily._

_Then his smile faded, his rough, masculine features growing serious as he opened dark eyes to her, snaring her with their terrifying grip of finality._

"_Bones," he said, his voice hard and gritty with the honesty he was struggling with. "I need you to know…" He paused._

'_If I die.' It hung there between them, both of them hearing the words even if they never made it to fruition._

"_I need you to know that I lov—"_

_But she never let him finish, pushing her lips against his in the desperate effort to stay his words before they stole away her chance for the one thing she wanted most from him._

_She knew it was ridiculous and irrational. She knew that words were inconsequential and had no real value beyond the intrinsic promise that they offered to bring to life. But that was exactly what she wanted. Despite logic, despite reasonable, rational expectation… she wanted a promise._

_An irrational, unaccountable and unfounded promise…_

_She wanted him to promise that he was coming back._

_To her._

_There were tiny, precious few moments in her life where Brennan allowed herself to believe in anything that fell solely upon the shoulders of faith. Notions of luck and charms and talismans, though anthropologically they appeared in every culture, eluded her because they held no truth. They were fickle promises and deceitful guarantees that offered no accountability for their failure. If luck failed, it was rationalized away as simply being victim to a greater power… not because it clearly and obviously didn't exist, and Brennan could not seem to reconcile herself to capricious belief._

_Things happened. It really was that simple. Bad, good and indifferent… things happened, and not under the spell of any mystical webbing within the universe or at the will of some intangible 'higher power'. Life was chaos, the future unknowable, and she did not believe in assigning patterns or significance where none existed_

_But she was still human, and although her brain had a more astute referee than most, even her hyper-rationality could be colored by her emotions and her biases. She thought back on moments like when she had bet on Booth in Vegas, feeding into the ridiculous notion of 'beginner's luck' in order to help him despite everything she knew. But it had worked then and a part of her that she had buried a long time ago wondered if it might work again for her now._

"_Don't tell me, Booth," she whispered urgently against his lips. She stroked his cheek with her hand, cupping his jaw to splay her fingers wide against him. "Don't say it now. Tell me when you come back."_

_He didn't say anything, but his mouth tightened and he swallowed hard and so she kissed him again, willing him to understand what she wanted even if she didn't fully understand herself._

"_Promise me."_

_A promise was worth nothing. But a promise from him… that was everything._

_Booth stared heavily down at her, his body frozen even as his heartbeat took on the rattling clank of a beat-up, old jalopy, thumping a painful, meaty cadence against his ribs. Mildly hurt at her second rejection of his attempts to vocalize his feelings, he couldn't help but marvel bitterly at her gifted talent for semantics, and he knew then that she'd backed him into a corner._

_He had refused to promise his return. He knew that was something that he couldn't guarantee, regardless of the dangerous drop in his stomach every time he dared to hope, and he wouldn't lie to her. Even the thought of deceiving her that way made him sick with the jagged edges of guilt. But he could see in her eyes that she wanted him to say those words. She wanted to be able to put her faith in him rather than in hope or luck because he was tangible… evidential… accountable… real in the way that Brennan measured all things in existence. _

_And she trusted him in a way that she didn't dare to trust anything that bordered on blind faith. Because there was nothing blind there between them anymore… after all the years and the dangers and the relentless testing and pushing and shoving… she saw everything._

_She trusted what she saw._

_But here she was, demanding that his wrenching heart offer her the promise that she so desperately needed, the promise that she wanted not being one that he could deny her, even at the risk of his soul and his integrity. Because he did love her, and to deny her that promise would negate the words he had so fervently just tried to tell her._

_He swallowed hard again, forcing back the painful lump that had risen in his throat._

"_I promise. When I come back… I'll tell you," he said, his voice hoarse and grating against the lie he suddenly felt that she'd blackmailed from him._

_He disliked the word 'when' the moment it fell off his tongue. It was too finite; it left no room for chance or mistakes, binding him into a truth that he had no right to give. With that one word he'd boxed himself in… and now when he inevitably failed, he would die a liar as well…_

_Rolling onto his back, he let his head fall to the side, away from her as he rubbed his hand over his face. Why wouldn't she just let him say the words? Why couldn't he just tell her so that when he died he'd have just that little bit of relief knowing that he'd finally stopped being a coward, that his slate was finally clean? She already knew. Why was she forcing this last barrier between them at a time when he'd have no chance of waiting it out? He didn't have the time for patience._

_He wallowed in self-pity for several minutes, choking down his misery like a bitter pill as physical and mental exhaustion took their toll on his ability to reason. Too-long buried fears and insecurities ate away at him, knotting agonizingly within his stomach as doubt came roaring to the surface, unchecked and unopposed. All he knew was that he was hurting, too tired to search for motive in her words. It never occurred to his blurring mind that the significance was in her want of a promise, in her defiance of her usually rational ways as she reached for him on his level, through his heart. But fatigue was gnawing at his brain, leaving him too drained and mauled to think, he could only feel… and all his waning grip on emotional sanity could pinpoint then was the feeling of hurt and the poignant sting of rejection. _

_Although he was silent, Brennan could tell by his breathing patterns that he was still awake. She touched his chest tentatively and was startled when she felt him jump slightly under her fingers. She didn't like that his hand was cupped over his eyes, as if forcibly trying to hold his thoughts together while he sealed himself away again. She didn't like that she didn't understand the sudden change in him, disappointed yet again in her own abilities to read the subtleties belied by human body language._

_Unsure of what else to do, she went with what she knew best._

"_Booth, are you okay?" she asked quietly, struggling to pull her aching body up on her elbow so that she could lean over him, hoping for a better glimpse of his face._

"_Promise me you'll be happy."_

_It was his voice that cut her to the quick, a hard growl as though he hated the words even as they snapped venomously from his mouth. Her hand that was reaching out towards him retracted. Suddenly it didn't seem like a good idea to touch him._

"_What?"_

_Booth was ashamed when the words slipped from him in anger, not necessarily at her, but she was certainly wrapped up in the overwhelming doubt that was suddenly suffocating him as he allowed his insecurities to cloud his head. He was so tired of having to fight to be strong._

"_If you meet someone… while I'm gone, if you meet someone special just… just promise me you'll be happy, okay?"_

_Even as he said, it felt like an ultimatum, like an ugly demand to punish her in the same way that he felt his promise punished him. And he hated himself for it._

_He couldn't look at her as he spoke. Although his hand fell away and his eyes opened, they were glazed and focused on nothingness as he stared fixedly upwards, trying not to be sick as unwanted images of her life without him flashed through his head, of other men being privy to her heart and her body, hearing her soft whispers at night as she lay peacefully beside them, her memories of Booth long since stored away as past. But although his tone was harsh, a bitter retaliating snap back against the injury that she hadn't known she'd caused with her demand of a promise and refusal to let him say the words they both already knew… he really did want her to be happy._

_He was still a good enough man to want that for her, he reckoned silently, trying to ease the sting of his own poison; he just was not quite good enough to not feel hurt when he knew he wouldn't be a part of it._

_He would be a good man, he assured himself… even if he had to struggle to be one._

_She didn't say anything for a long while, lying there motionless beside him, her shadowy blue eyes flickering wetly as they snapped back and forth between his own that still stared blankly ahead, desperately trying to understand the implications of what he'd said. She didn't want to take those words literally, but the reaction was instinctive. She couldn't explain the piercing way those words had entered her body, squeezing and tightening and twisting until her blurring vision reminded her that she needed to breathe despite the pain it caused her._

_With a last shimmering glance, she allowed a single, breathy sob to escape before turning over onto her side, away from him as she scooted closer to the edge of the bed to avoid the heat of his body beside her. She put her back to him, drawing her arms up to her chest protectively though she refused to curl herself in tightly the way she was desperate to, deciding to keep at least that portion of her pride intact as she slid her hand under her cheek and refused to acknowledge the tear that rolled traitorously down her nose and splashed onto the sheet below. Her body was too exhausted to let her focus on where she went wrong, not understanding why he was so clearly offended that she wanted him to come back to her._

_Booth grimaced as he felt her shift away from him, waiting to feel the mattress heave with the announcement of her departure. He closed his eyes and swallowed back a sob, wondering why he'd had to say the right thing in such a wrong and hurtful way. But his desire to do right by her refused to recall the words._

_He was shocked, however, when he felt her body still, and he let his head fall in her direction to see her back to him, her skin still bare and vulnerable despite the sheet that was wrapped tightly about her torso to protect herself from the cold and from him. Her shoulders were taut, her body, the one that had been so soft and pliant in his arms was now rigid and brittle, and he was helpless against the need to reach for her and soothe away that hurt._

_She stiffened when his fingertips brushed her shoulder blade in apologetic strokes but didn't respond. For a while he lay on his back, fingers ghosting over her back in abstract lines, tracing muscles, bones, sinew and anything else of her he could think to find as he struggled for the courage to move closer. Finally he scooted in, hurt but undeterred when she shifted away closer to the edge of the bed. But she didn't push him away; she didn't flee from his arms. _

_He settled his hand on her shoulder and raised the bulk of his upper body on his other arm, pressing his chest against her unresponsive body as he gently coaxed her to lean back against him. She didn't fight him, allowing herself to sink back into his chest as he rolled her into him, but when he risked a glance down at her face, her expression was cold and closed off, her eyes vacant with her distant thoughts as they glistened in the direct light of the open window._

_Booth looked down at her sadly, brushing wisps of hair away from her face with tender reverence as he dropped small, apologetic kisses along the curve of her neck, feeling abject and broken by her stillness._

_His heartbeat stuttered sharply as her whispered, "I promise," cut through the silence, and a sudden selfish need avalanched through him as he realized that those were the last words in the world that he wanted from her, unable to bear the pain of hearing her promise to move on without him. He choked back tears, unwilling to let them fall as he pulled her tighter against him._

_There was a savage part of him, a horrid, lecherous monster in his heart that wanted to know that she would mourn him forever. And though he hated himself for it, he couldn't bring himself to deny it._

_Not that he wanted to ever cause her pain, but…_

_He wanted her to miss him. He wanted her to remember him. He wanted her to want him even after he was gone._

'_Don't say that,' he wanted to scream. He'd already given up on himself. He didn't think he'd survive if she gave up on him too._

"_I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he whispered to her over and over, praying that she felt his sincerity and trusted in him still._

_She tilted her head back a little, silently encouraging him as he tucked his chin in against the hollow of her shoulder, his hand curving softly over her body as he curled his impossibly tighter around hers. He felt her body through the crispness of the bed sheet, letting his hand rest on the swell of her hip as he pressed his cheek against hers, inhaling deeply as his eyes drooped, wondering why this all had to be so very difficult and when had he stopped knowing all the right things to say and do._

_Eventually her breathing settled and he knew then that she was asleep. As gently as possible, he untangled himself from her and slipped out of bed, dragging one last lingering caress down her arm before he turned away and retreated to the adjoining bathroom. He let the door click shut behind him and flicked on the light, wincing as the sudden brightness struck his eyes and momentarily blinded him. With a tired sigh, he hunched over the sink to splash cold water on his face, scrubbing hard on the rough, unshaven skin until it was raw and red and as anger as he felt._

_When his eyes turned up to catch hold of the visage that greeted him in the mirror, he wasn't sure that he knew the man staring back at him. Slowly, hesitantly, he lifted shaking fingers to touch the back of his skull, trying unsuccessfully to feel the surgical scar that had long since healed over and the hair grown back, erasing the place where the tumor had been cut from him along with vital portions of the man he used to be and wondered if he would ever be again. He didn't entirely recognize the countenance before him, the one that glared back through darkly hooded eyes and looked so much like the man who was now only a stranger to him._

_Trapped inside the mirror was the man who could tell when people lied and who remembered what brand of orange juice he preferred. That man was the one who knew how to wield a weapon with deadly accuracy, who remembered how to go about being a soldier and a hunter of men while Booth was left staring at ghosts, trying desperately to figure out if he still had it in him to be that man who found his target and kept his promises and came back home._

_He had been to war and killed so many men and when he looked down that blood was still upon his hands, but that was the man whose brain had not been cut open and violated, whose mind had not turned on itself and forgotten the road to sanity._

_Booth realized then that he was no longer that man who trusted himself. And how could he? How could he look in the mirror and trust a man who had lost everything about himself with no promise that he had gotten all of his old self back again. Everyday it seemed he was reminded of another lost piece. Only now he still didn't know how many more were left out in space, still waiting to be collected. He didn't even know what all it was that he was supposed to remember. There was still so much he didn't feel right about._

_Brennan had said that he was missing certain things still, "Boothy" things that made him who he was. But now so many of those things felt unfamiliar, and not at all like him. Did that mean that he was not the same man as before? He couldn't remember why he had ever been afraid of clowns, though everyone he knew swore that his phobia had been real. Now there was no fear… and he had no idea what that meant for him._

_And he no longer trusted himself to hit the target. What had once been as natural to him as breathing he could now only do under the desperation to keep his partner safe, and while he had so far succeeded, the gun no longer felt comfortable in his hand; once an extension of himself was now a dead weight that strained his wrist and rubbed uncomfortably against his fingertips, the cool metal now biting and unpleasant._

_But he knew that was a part of who he had been before… of who he was supposed to be now._

_And he was terrified that a piece of what he had lost was one of those pieces that had kept him alive all of those times before, that maybe the Booth who had known how to survive in battle did not exist anymore, that maybe it was still among those pieces that he still hadn't been able to recover._

_His head hung heavily and nausea rolled and contracted his stomach in hot waves, the sound of the running faucet suddenly poundingly loud inside his head. He choked back the bile that rose and set fire to the back of his throat, coughing as his eyes burned with salt and self-doubt._

"_Booth?"_

_Her soft voice washed over him as he gripped at the countertop viciously with shaking hands in his struggle to remain upright. His knees trembled and he was sure that he felt the wet roll of sweat as it dripped down his face and dampened the hair on the back of his neck. Panic and lightheadedness seized him and he swallowed hard against the piercing in his chest as his rational mind fought to convince his body that it wasn't really dying even if it truly believed it was._

_She couldn't see him like this, he thought frantically. Couldn't see him weak. Couldn't see him broken… a pathetic fragment of a formerly proud man._

"_Booth, are you okay?_

_In an instant she was by his side, though he wasn't sure when exactly she'd appeared since he'd been so wrapped up inside his own head, festering and rotting away inside himself. He didn't resist as she coaxed him gently down to the tile floor to rest his back against the coldness of the wall, his head collapsing backwards against the hardness, but then he felt her presence hovering in front of him, her fingers peeling up the eyelids that he didn't remember closing._

"_Booth," her voice drifted into his head, all echoes and hums. "Booth, you're having an anxiety attack. Shhh, you're going to be alright. You'll be okay, it'll pass, shhh…"_

_And then he felt her cool hands upon his face and he sobbed with the relief of it, his breath catching in his throat as he opened bloodshot eyes to see her crouched before him, looking so concerned and comforting as she pressed her palm to his forehead to wipe away the sweat. He squinted at her, his battered and scrambled mind struggling to focus._

_She clutched his face tightly. "Is this the first time this has happened?" She demanded, worry sharpening her tone._

_He didn't answer. He couldn't, his throat dry and squeezing so tightly._

"_Booth, has this happened to you before?"_

_He shook his head. Then he nodded before shaking his head again, disorientation spinning him as the room tilted and the nausea came roaring back._

_When it all settled finally, he found himself lying prostrate on the floor, his head in her lap and she soothed her fingers through his damp hair with gentle passing strokes. He cleared his throat against the rawness he felt there, pressing his cheek tighter against her thigh, his own fingers coming up to clutch absently at her knee._

"_What if I can't do it, Bones?" he whispered, his voice catching on gravel and grit. "What if I don't know how to be that man anymore? What if I don't know how to make it back this time?"_

_Brennan opened her mouth then closed it, unsure of how to answer him and terrified of making whatever he was suffering worse. She suspected now where his fear lay, but she didn't fully understand though she wanted desperately for him to stop hurting as he so obviously was._

"_You did it before, Booth," she said gently. "Logic dictates that you can do so again. You still possess all those skills you had before. There is no reason to assume the worst."_

_Part of her brain was whispering about death being a rational assumption, but she clamped down tightly on it, refusing to that little bit of realistic fact escape her lips. Like most people she knew, Booth was not a man always comforted by factual possibility or statistical probability. And right then, fueled on by his fears and her own, Brennan found herself taking none of her usual comfort in them either._

_He shook his head against her, his eyes going wide and frighteningly vacant. "But I don't know him," he said. "I don't remember him."_

"_They cut out that part of me when they went digging around inside my head."_

"_Booth, the surgeons only removed the tumor, they didn't—"_

"_But they did, Bones, they did. I went to sleep and they took a knife and cut out pieces of my brain, and now I don't remember things… important things… things about the man I was. I don't like the same foods, I'm not afraid of clowns, it still seems a bit strange to wear the crazy socks that are supposed to be 'me,' and I don't feel the same with a gun in my hand. My aim isn't the same as it was, and I let that guy trick me with a lie even when you'd proved—"_

"_Booth," she shushed him softly, hoping to calm him before he got himself too worked up. "But your aim is back to normal. I was there when you took the exam."_

_He squeezed his eyes shut, self-doubt rebelling against any of the logical proof she gave him as he clung to hopeless, far too afraid of disappointment to accept her comfort._

"_Only because of you… it's only because of you, and now I'm leaving. You won't be there. You'll be gone from me, just like who I was, and it's never coming back," he said, his voice cold and breathless as he started to sink into unconsciousness, his body finally giving up on him._

_Brennan didn't know what to say, barely able to control her own trembling as chemicals flooded her body with distress, so instead she shook him awake as much as she could, struggling to stagger to her feet and only just able to bring him along with her with the little help he could muster. But she managed; because she had to, she managed. She tucked herself under his arm and they stumbled together the few short steps back to his bed where he collapsed face down onto the mattress in a drunken sprawl, unconscious before he hit the blanket. Brennan curled up next to him, pillowing her head on his wide back with her arm around him, and she slung the blanket over both of them before she too gave in to her exhaustion._

_She woke what felt like seconds later to find herself alone, tangled in a cocoon of bedding that still radiated with the heat of the body that had been tucked in next to hers. She blinked slowly against the miserable throbbing that pulsed behind her temples, stress and physical exhaustion erupting in the form of a hellish migraine, and she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand as she rolled onto her back, lifting her head to search for him._

_With a sudden flare of panic she realized she was alone._

_Scrambling to free herself, she shoved the warm comforter aside and hurriedly pulled herself up, shrugging into her discard clothes as quickly as her sleep-fuzzy mind allowed, her only thoughts of Booth._

_Where the hell had he gone? She wondered, suddenly fearful that he had done something stupid for what he thought was their own good._

… _maybe no good-bye was the easy good-bye, she wondered wretchedly._

_Rushing down the hallway, her pulse slowed and then sped again as she spotted him leaning back against the counter in the kitchen, one hand rubbing sore muscles at the base of his neck while he stared off into space, the other hand cradling an untouched mug of coffee. She was surprised to note that he was dressed casually, like a civilian in dark blue denim and a plain white t-shirt, his hair still slightly damp from the shower that he'd at some point managed to pull himself under._

_His head snapped up as she entered the kitchen, his eyes locking on hers as her footsteps slowed tentatively now that she'd found him still there and not having run off without so much as a good-bye. Brennan suddenly felt hesitant to admit that maybe some well-ingrained fears never truly went away after all, she thought embarrassedly._

_He gave her a small smile, trying so hard to look like his old, light-hearted self and almost succeeding as he reached to hand her the coffee mug in his hand before he turned to pour himself another one._

"_Morning," he said quietly, feeling somewhat awkward as to how to proceed in the ugly light of the early morning._

"_Are you okay?" she asked quickly, dispensing with silly pleasantries. It was a little late for that, she figured._

_He smiled ruefully, thinking just how much he was going to miss that. No one else told it like it was quite like Brennan._

_He shrugged, not really knowing what answer was the honest one._

"_I guess so."_

_She seemed to accept that, quietly sipping her coffee for a few moments. "What time is it?" she asked, both of them knowing full well that that wasn't the question she was really asking._

"_Almost a quarter to six," he said. He turned his head up to look at her. "I called a cab, they'll be here soon. My flight leaves in about an hour or so."_

"_Cutting it a little close, aren't you?"_

_He smiled at her, his eyes dark and sad despite his effort to hide it. "Eh, had somewhere better to be."_

_He set his cup back down on the counter and walked over to her, one hand reaching up to cup her face while the other pulled the cup from her hands and placed it on the counter as well as he wrapped his arms around her, hugging her close to him as he breathed her in deeply._

"_Thank you," he whispered against her ear._

_Brennan swallowed hard and hugged him tighter, her fingers digging into his back through the thin cotton while he stroked his hands slowly over her hair and her shoulders, pressing his lips against her ear with a deep sigh. For long minutes they were content to hold each other, taking a moment to lose themselves away from whatever else was coming and just basking in the arms that held them, knowing that for just that moment, they were safe and exactly where they had finally admitted they wanted to be._

_Finally he let her go with an abject smile, stroking the hair back from her forehead as he turned tiredly and made his way to the living room to collect the small black travel bag that was the only thing he was taking with him. Everything else got left behind._

_Brennan walked behind him, waiting as he shrugged into his leather coat before she grabbed her own from the back of the couch and followed him out the front door. Silently they made their way down to the street below, both of the shivering against the burst of cold air that hit them as they stepped outside. The sun shone deceptively bright and might have even felt warm if it wasn't for the wind that clung firmly to its bitter chill despite the cloudless blue sky and the near blinding brightness of the early morning._

_He switched his bag to his other hand so that he could twine his fingers with hers, nudging her shoulder with his own as he glanced down at her, his brown eyes dark and searching as they warmed her face. She smiled up at him, hoping that it was more reassuring than it felt._

_After an eternity it seemed, a cab finally rolled up to the curve alongside them. Booth sighed heavily as he let go of her, opening the door to the backseat and carelessly tossing his bag inside, understanding that when she didn't move, it was a silent agreement that this was where they parted. His grip tightened painfully on the car door, and he turned around to face her one last time._

"_Bones…"_

_He looked at her, standing there in the winter morning light, her eyes sparkling with tears she wouldn't surrender to and her smile so soft behind that hardened, rigidly self-imposed control that he always saw in her even at her most vulnerable moments. He saw her pride, her arrogance, her sweetness and all the misery that he was putting her through right then. He saw her love for him._

_In a flash he crushed her to him, his mouth hard and demanding and desperate on hers as he fought for one last taste of the words that she hadn't spoken but were so clearly written on her face whenever she looked at him now, those words that he trusted now were true. He slanted his lips and caught her breathy gasp, echoing with a feral moan as her fingers twisted tightly in his hair, yanking him in closer, his arms locked and squeezing around her. Just another second, he pleaded silently over and over, just one more and then he'd be able to let her go._

_His hands snaked up to cup the sides of her face, tearing his lips from hers violently._

"_I love you," he whispered harshly._

_He slammed his mouth back down on hers just one more time, missing it as her eyes flared open wide, completely unaware of the hope he'd just robbed from her with that one avid, fraught need for honesty, forgetting all about the promise that he'd unintentionally broken._

_Both of them were too dazed to fully grasp the moment that he slipped from her and disappeared into the cab, which sped away too fast for either of them come to their senses and postpone the moment a little longer._

_Standing alone there on the sidewalk, Brennan brought her hand up to her lips where she still felt the burn of his light scruff and his hard kiss, tears finally streaming unimpeded down her face now that she was safe and alone and wondering if the pain she was feeling was the normal agony of a deserted lover, or if it was the death of the hope that she should have known better than to enslave herself to when she knew fully well the dangers of naïve optimism, leaving her to no longer feel as though she had a promise left to cling to._

_He'd taken that away with that one declaration that had destroyed her in every way imaginable, glorious and heartening and so cruel now as she wondered what there was left to bring him back to her when he was already so determined that he die._

_Booth for his part had sunk down into the hard leather bench seat, feeling bruised and broken and exhausted, but he couldn't help the soft smile that touched his lips that still tingled with her presence. He couldn't deny that he felt a little lighter, even if not totally hopeful, his doubts and fears far from dispelled, but as he slumped down and leaned his head against the window, he thought of her face and swore that he would do whatever it took to keep his promise to her, because he knew as immediately as they had rolled off his lips that he would never be able to say those words enough, that he was already aching to have her hear them again. From him… nobody else, he thought with a sudden streak of possessiveness. That he would do whatever it took to be that man again._

_He would, he swore to himself. He would do it because he had to be… because nothing else would do. Nothing else would keep that promise._

_

* * *

_So now we move back to the present. I hope this lived up to the expectations of the departure. Like I said, this chapter really kicked my ass so any thoughts on it would really be appreciated.


	14. Baby Steps Across the Grave

Alright guys, I'm back after what's been way too long. Sorry about the wait, life gets in the way with weddings, funerals, a messed up work overload and a new relationship, all on top of a battle with a chapter that just wouldn't allow itself to be written. But seriously, how great was season 5? It was epic, and it fits so freaking perfectly with this story that it's almost scary, cause I'm not a spoiler follower and I've had this story all planned since last August, but damned if most of those episodes didn't just fit like puzzle pieces. So I'll be incorporating most of season 5, all up until the Gravedigger episode, into the backstory cause it just works too well not to.

For those of you who've been kind enough to review this story, I'm so glad that everyone seems to be enjoying reading it as much as I have writing it. I'm glad that there seem to be Brennan sympathizers out there cause a lot of times I think her character gets a bit of a bad rep as being a bitch, so I'm thrilled that you guys seem to be liking my interpretation of these awesome characters. So now I'm back, I'll be updating frequently now that I've got my groove back and my life junk under control, so expect more and expect it fairly fast.

As always, I'd love to hear what you guys think. Reviews always do help me write faster since I then know what resonates. Last chapters reviews were amazing so let's see if we can top it and let me know you guys want me to continue.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

When he was lucky enough to dream, he dreamt of gentle colors.

Sweet pastel blues and soft, billowy greens and the occasional downy puffs of violet and lavender that swilled along the faintest edges of gold, accentuated against a deep backdrop of the richest melts of burgundy. It was a beauty that both transcended and pursued his every effort to withdraw when it all became too much to take but not enough to keep. He would sigh as they washed by in a languorous torrent, filling him with their tranquilly flooding surge as they passed through unhindered, fingers of every shade and softness reaching out to graze and caress and tease.

And he would turn his head and follow, just to let those feelings linger.

He would breathe. His chest would rise. Fall.

In.

Out.

Drowning… the only temptation that sluiced across his lips.

He breathed in ink and let it permeate his lungs, bleeding the beauty deeper into himself.

Praying that any small piece of that magic would touch him, really touch him… for once touching him with something real.

They were memories, he thought, that wouldn't fully surface, wouldn't formulate but refused to disappear completely when he slept.

Oh god, when he slept…

It was always the blues that pulled him deepest. Down spiraling through the deluge of navy and the quivering streaks and slivers of azure and the brightest cobalt until he sank under a heavy wave of indigo and aqua so opulent it caused his heart to twist hard and made him ache.

It was like sinking beneath the ocean, allowing the waves to swallow him up, drifting and directionless with no means to orient his surroundings and no real desire to do so. His only certainty and comfort was that the promised moment would devour him whole and never let go, and in trade for his life, he'd be given a privileged glimpse at that touch of color that only those who are too far gone can witness.

It was that blue right before the black, just before the last slivers of light were no longer able to pierce those watery depths when the world was equal parts color and shadow, and the only way to survive was to look into the darkness and know that it was too late to do anything else.

Then it was a moment in which feeling was both nothing and everything, every breath preciously and selfishly wasted on fighting that primordial fight… on satiating those deep hungers that nature had fed to him. Life would whisper by and tickle at the sharpest point of his heart and suddenly it was more…

In every fleeting pass, he felt that touch.

He remembered.

And every time, for just a little while, he drifted home a little more.

It was the most tender swirling of brushstrokes through the darkness and a softer, calmer warmth than what was waiting for him on the other side of the consciousness.

There he was content.

He was cocooned. Lulling and hypnotic, it soothed over him like a dusting of fast-fading embers until he was painted with the ash of that ineffable sweetness, and he sank further, swallowing up the dark and breathing in the heat.

He never dreamed of her per se, never managed to distinguish her face against the shadows of hazy recollection, but he never had to doubt. He met her inside the darkness every time he closed his eyes. The warmth and the fog and the swelling that pressed beneath his ribs made his body feel tight and pressurized and weightless all at once.

It was as if there was too much oxygen begging to seep into his bloodstream, and there was never enough lung to satisfy neither man nor element.

Always he was choking on air. Suffocated by a whim.

But she was there.

Always, she was waiting for him.

Ever was she under his fingers, under the press of his lips, making the base of his neck tingle and sending both new and familiar ripples down his spine while he drowned under the spell of her misting dreamily over his skin, faceless, formless but always there, always her, and always haunting and always, always exactly the way he remembered when he was brave enough to wake and believe that those touches that he recalled and felt so longingly were more than figments inside his head… this time around.

Because he had been fooled before.

That was the thought that was always sobering.

Because when he was awake it was always only hunger that filled him, and the desperation that was known only to the man who thought he knew what is was to watch fate slowly pull the noose tighter, who consciously awaited every breath with bated anticipation. And the wonderment of when the inevitable pitfall of this surreal reality would come crashing down around him.

Booth still believed in fate. He had told her so not all that long ago.

She, to no great surprise, had disagreed.

But when he slept, it was undeniable, and what he wanted and believed and felt was real, more real than it ever otherwise might be again. Her presence was undeniable, thousands of miles beyond hope though she was.

And he would remember her warmth, her softness, and his belly would flatten and quiver in a way he wasn't sure he'd survive though he'd give anything to prolong the torment of it.

_They_ were undeniable.

For now he would breathe while awake and settle for living while he slept.

And so he slept if only so that he might dream a little more.

* * *

It was the jerkiness of the rocky desert terrain that woke him.

He groaned, a bitter protest pulling from his throat as his skull bounced wickedly against the aluminum rail frame that roofed the bed of the beat-to-hell pickup truck, and he was immediately jolted to that dizzying point of hyper-sensatory awareness and cognitive fogginess as he worked to make heads or tails of the ambiguous signals sparking through his nervous system.

He gritted his teeth. His body seethed.

Instinct caused his hand to come up to grab the back of his head where it throbbed insistently, pain lancing all the way down the nape of his neck to between his shoulder blades where the muscles were knotted and tight. All the while his brain struggled with the speed of its shifting gears and the risk of flooding an engine that was already dangerously close to overloading.

Oh god, he wasn't ready for this…

It was too much alien information taxing him so suddenly, everything agonizingly foreign to both his body and his head, and his eyes clenched shut tightly in response.

It was too much change, he thought rabidly. Why did it suddenly feel like the world was spinning wildly off its axis?

His body fought against the desperately urgent need to vomit, the need to release, the bile suddenly clawing at the back of his throat so impossible to ignore…

Too much… too… too hot… too fuckin' much…

Where the hell had all this heat come from?

Fuck.

But underneath it all there was a simmering reservoir of familiarity that sickened him even more, like a dream that he'd rather just forget but couldn't seem to shake, like a secret shame that lingered tauntingly in the shallow, telltale grave where he'd buried it.

Where in God's name was he again?

What did he think he was doing?

He couldn't think… couldn't remember… why couldn't he remember? ... Or maybe, for just those few precious seconds, it was that he refused to remember. Defense mechanisms could be daunting like that, after all.

But he knew. God damn it, was he ever sure of it.

The nausea hit him quickly, squeezing and swelling hotly in the back of his throat and passing on just as fast although the pinch remained in his bottom of his stomach like a commemorative threat.

His jaw clenched, grinding his molars together roughly as he sucked deep breaths of air between his teeth.

The disorientation that gripped him combined into a heady, potent cocktail with the initial spasm of panic that had been a constant waking phenomenon for months now… everyday, in fact, since he awoke from that life that was not his, and he was left to face the truth of a reality he could no longer trust. Ever since his surgery, he was hard pressed to remember a morning that hadn't started out with a flicker of anxiety, those first moments always a desperately eager quest to substantiate the world around him as consciousness came into full bloom.

His life since had revolved obsessively around waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Breathing in a deep, settling breath that rattled shakily across his lips despite his strongest efforts, Booth let his eyes flicker open for a moment and tried to feel confident about the sights that greeted him. The sand-crusted, rusty interior of the truck bed, the uniformed and already haggard men that littered the cramped confines, the long rifle bodies strewn with only seeming carelessness across resting laps. And the whole while, blazing sunlight streaming in through the canvas flaps that covered the tailgate, allowing him a peek out at the rocky barren wasteland that waited, forever patient and biding, outside

He did his best not to notice the familiar feel of the M-4 collapsible gun stock against his thigh as he let his eyes slide shut once again, unwilling yet to believe that this was anything but a less than desirable dream.

However unfortunate, the fact of the matter was that Booth had been on shaky ground with his usual brusque confidence for quite some time now. Cocky had left him long ago, and although he was finally back to sporting his iconic Boothy buckle, anymore it felt like a false bravado that he no longer enjoyed or deserved. As a soldier and an FBI agent, he had brushed past death more times than he cared to remember, always wanting only to focus on the luck that had pulled him safely through.

Ironic, he thought then, that it had taken a shadow of a life to devastate everything that he thought he knew about himself… indeed, everything he thought he knew about _everything_. And the lie of it all was what had finally brought him to his knees.

He doubted himself.

Booth had lived his entire life with a gift for reading others; that unfailing ability had given him the control that he so surreptitiously needed, a need that Sweets would undoubtedly attribute to the volatility of his childhood. Never before had he ever thought the day would come when he would have to be suspicious of himself. That feeling alone had rocked him more than he'd ever let on, even to the people who knew him best.

For a man like Seeley Booth, shattered confidence was both devastating and dangerous as it threatened the very grounding of his sense of self. After all, it is the falling of giants that cause the greatest waves to ripple in their wake. And though he would not think it of himself, his crashing had sent a thunderous tsunami roaring throughout every last sparkling nerve he possessed.

That particular moment there in the desert proved to be no different than any of those that came before it. Waking to the sensation of a being tossed and rattled with all the gentleness of a concussion grenade inside that pitiless bouncing truck, with the heat beating down in thick, stifling waves, reality couldn't have seemed more untrustworthy in those first agonizing seconds.

It was the first and only time, however, that he had found himself praying for insanity to be the answer to his silent questioning.

For months now, Booth had wondered when he would finally be able to put this new phobia firmly behind him, having trouble with just how far out of control he'd fallen.

He didn't like that he doubted himself. He didn't like the hesitation that lingered in every small decision and action, that he was no longer free to trust himself and his senses, that he'd been robbed of the pleasure of spontaneity and impulse. He was a kneejerk sort of man. Or at least he used to be.

Now he didn't know what he was.

Mostly, he could not bear that he had been betrayed by the very instinct that he had spent his whole life putting so much stock in, that he had leaned so heavily upon, the same instinct that had saved him so many times before.

It was that same instinct that he could no longer rely on to save him now when he needed it more than ever, struggling but failing not to think about how much more he had to lose. He'd never felt more like a man who'd been left without a leg to stand on.

Feeling his blood pressure spike with the initial flood of adrenaline that thought caused, he suspected that his moment of salvation was still a long time coming, if it ever did at all. Having been a relatively patient man for most of his life, he was finding himself finally dangling at the end of his ropes, ready to snap at any moment and afraid to breathe lest the motion jar the teetering balance he was working hard not to upset.

He was always afraid that he wouldn't be able to anticipate that final plunge before it happened and the last remnants of control dropped out from under him.

Even now, the paranoia remained, and he was so tired of having to be a patient man.

For months and months now he'd been enduring as best he could, working hard to live only the life he'd earned and not resent that it wasn't more.

Surprisingly enough, it was the soft-lit mornings that were the hardest to handle. On the occasions when he woke in the middle of the night, whether it was from dreams or interruptions in the silence, he was rarely unnerved by the darkness and the solitude that greeted him. Then it was to be expected. Those moments were flickers at best, or worst depending on how one looked at it; it was just a flash in the pan before his very apparent bachelorhood hit him hard and square in the chest.

Then it was easy to remember that he was alone. It was easy to sweep his arm across the sheet as he stretched and rolled and not miss the soft, warm body that he knew better than to expect to be there next to him.

It was easier not to long for things that had never been his to begin with.

But on those mornings where the sun seeped in, the light tenderly kissing his stubbled cheek as it pulled him into wakefulness, into reminiscence, he would give in to the smile tugging at his lips and with his eyes still closed he'd reach for her beside him, looking instinctively to tuck her smaller feminine body in tight against his own bulkier frame, always hungry for those first all-encompassing breaths as he resigned himself into rising for the day. Hungry for just a wisp of that idyllic sense of belonging that only ever came from physical contact that was steeped so heavily in a deep and shared emotional bond, utterly irreplaceable and, he was convinced, the most heart-wrenchingly real miracle of which mankind is capable.

But every morning he would find himself lonely and, before he could stop himself, wondering why.

For long moments he would find himself missing her presence and wondering what it was that kept her from his embrace, and why that swelling pressure that had filled his chest only moments before with the sweetest happiness suddenly shifted to a tight, strangling pain, the sensations so alike and yet so simultaneously and confusingly different that for long minutes his head would swim.

Irreconcilable. That's how he would always feel.

No end to the game in sight. No idea of what the game even was, only ever knowing that he just wanted to scream for everything to just stop and never understanding the impulses that filled him.

He would lie there, wondering where and why she had gone when their bed was so deliciously warm and inviting.

He would spend minutes there motionless, unsure why but hesitant to move... unable to believe that the time he spent waiting was, in actuality, time that went by wasted.

It was even longer minutes before his mind would revive the memory that she had never been there at all, that the pillow next to his had been cold and ignored all through the night and held no creases from where she had lied beside him. He would often struggle to believe that the sheets tangled about his legs had not also wrapped themselves around hers, and that the coolness of the mattress top was not from dissipated body heat but rather that it had never been warmed at all.

It always took him long moments of denial before he resigned himself to the truth that she didn't have a place in his bed. That the bedroom in which he awoke was his and his alone, not hers, and had never, ever been theirs to share.

And every morning, his heart would twist and wrench as the reality cruelly reclaimed him with its absolute certainty. Yes, he would admit it to no one but himself, and then only silently… but yes, there were moments when he could barely bring himself to acknowledge the truth without wanting to scream petulantly and put his fist through the nearest pane of glass just for the satisfaction of watching something beautiful break.

Every single day, he would struggle harder and harder against unfair and target-less resentment.

With nowhere to go, with no one for him to fairly blame, those angers eventually began to work their way inward, self-punishment and personal responsibility a near instinct to him ever since childhood.

That was the way of good men, he would think to himself in the moments where it all felt too much to bear and he became terrified of shattering. That was his burden, the price he paid to be the man he wanted to be, the man he expected himself to be and of which he would settle for no less.

Certain things that could never be said, certain emotions that guilt and rationality would never allow him to utter, and so he swallowed them down.

Because at the end of the day, he had not been her lover. He was her friend and he would continue to be so. No matter the cost. He would be a good man.

During the day, Booth had spent so many hours tucking away those emotions and expectations that he had to remind himself constantly that he had no right to feel, shoveling as much mental dirt over the pathetically shallow graves of those inadequacies and vulnerabilities as he could in the futile hope that he'd be able to wake up at least one morning without the sensation of missing a woman that wasn't even his and never had been.

It had been so odd and unnerving, and the hurt had been so very real. Constantly reminding himself not to be angry or hurt when she didn't remember, because how could she? The memories that he had of them together were not ones that she shared with him.

They were fiction. But sometimes he would recall that those words had been her fiction, those words that had been so very real to him had originally belonged to her in a moment of fantasy, and he would remember that it was not the story that went unshared between them. It was the emotions by which they were divided.

And so he would try not to think about it, try not to feel the emotions that he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with.

But "out of sight, out of mind" was a plan that had still proved ineffective even after months and months of frantic efforts in the skillful art of suppression and more denial than he thought one man ever had the right to possess.

The truth was as obvious to him as it was distressing.

He didn't know how not to miss her anymore.

He didn't know how not to want something that wasn't real, didn't know how not to miss the fantasy.

He didn't know how not to resent everything that the world presented to him as real.

However he'd been managing before, and he was sure he had been because there was no way he believed he hadn't been in love before that surgeon had started hacking into him… love was in the heart, not the brain after all… but somewhere between the scalpel and the anesthesia, those doctors had cut away that crucial part of him that he had successfully buried those feelings for his partner behind. After that, there had been nowhere left to hide except in plain sight, staring into her eyes everyday and spending every night trying to piece those broken shards back together every time she failed to recognize the love that he was barely managing not to voice.

He had lost his ability to convince himself that he wasn't longing for her when she was around and desperate for just one more moment whenever she left.

But then he'd broken. After months of careful treading, he had slipped with the helpful goading of their friendly neighborhood therapist, and he'd done what he had sworn he would never do again.

He had gambled.

But he had only done so because for just a fleeting moment, he had been so sure that he saw that love staring back at him through her blue, blue eyes, shimmering behind the shock and panic that had threatened to consume her entirely at the madness he threw at her in a wild jumble of rushed words and silent pleas and an air of defeat before he ever even started.

Consume her it did. She'd blinked. And then she'd balked.

And Booth, who had been so sure of what he'd seen with his own eyes inside hers, was reminded again that these were things he could no longer trust himself to read, his eyes and instincts now as useless to him as the last vestiges of hope he'd just shattered.

All on a gamble that he'd suddenly wished he never would have chanced because for so long afterward, it had felt like he'd ruined everything for nothing and set ablaze his final bridge back to normalcy.

He'd cursed himself for believing what his eyes and heart had so desperately wanted to see.

After all, they had lied to him before. It seemed that they had done so again, no less successfully than before when they had twisted this proud, shrewd man into a gullible fool, and Booth felt sick just thinking about it.

He was haunted, that unshakable self-doubt leaving him to struggling with his naked vulnerability.

From that moment on, it had been a battle for dignity in every glance he shared with her. He never doubted that she cared about him. It was no secret to anyone that his partner had grown to be the closest friend he had. He knew that she was scared, and that was okay.

He knew that she loved him. It just hadn't been enough to overcome the nervousness that always accompanied such a drastic change in the status quo.

It hadn't been compatible with the type of love he felt for her, the type that he had suddenly been made starkly aware was unrequited.

Oddly enough, however, her rejection had brought them closer together than ever before, though at the time he had been defeated and emotionally battered to recognize it. The door that swung open between them might not have been walked through, but they could see each other clearly now without obstruction, for the first time without that barrier of denial between them.

After every case they still shared their victorious drinks together, but now they did so after every date that didn't involve their partner, both getting in their own way of what they each claimed they wanted to move passed.

But then everything had changed, and he had been the one to force their hand. And now… well, now, he didn't know what to believe or hope for anymore, and he had no one but himself to blame.

And the thought of what he'd left her with, the state in which he'd left their partnership, their friendship, their… it made him sick inside.

The memories of those last two days, those precious hours of what he hoped had been pure and unadulterated honesty, however, did nothing to assuage the insecurities and fears that were too deeply rooted. In fact, he was more terrified than ever to try to interpret what had happened between them in those fateful moments, especially when he was trapped there in the desert with no hope of contact, no way to explain or comfort and no way to make things right if he never got the chance.

The only thing he could do now was drive himself crazy with obsessively struggling to understand what had finally caused the dam to break, or if it had truly broken at all.

He had all but told her not to wait for him. At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do. But as often happens in retrospective observation, he couldn't help wondering what the hell he'd been thinking, or if he had been at all.

He had no idea where that left them now.

* * *

Alright guys, let me know what you think and what you want to read about next. Review and let me know if you want me to continue, as always, your comments are always so appreciated!


	15. Tick Tick Tick

Disclaimer: I don't own Bones, never have, never will. This is strictly for fun.

* * *

_Tick, Tick, Tick_

There was only a single memory that stayed strong.

Flying arrogantly in the face of the dragging passage of time, of brain tumors and busy lives, of unrequited love and of slowly cracking minds and everything in between… hell is the only thing that remains firm inside the soul. It is the only memory that cannot ever seem to fade.

And he remembered quickly what he'd never really forgotten.

That thick, wet pulsation of dry, baking air and the sticky moisture that seeped from every pore in retaliation, an inadequately adapted human body weeping for mercy where there was none to be found. It was the cruel juxtaposition of the desert, where wet met dry in the doomed battle for reconciliation and dominance, and it only served to reinforce the hopelessness of the hell in which he was stuck… with the word _forever_ ghosting tauntingly up the back of his throat.

Screaming to be released.

But then again… around there… everything tasted like a bitten back scream, like a dam desperate but unable to burst beyond that first slivering crack, tight and pinching in his pretzeling belly like the seamless pain of an orgasm caught on the brink of release and unable to just let go… and not really knowing how…

It was so hard to know what anything meant anymore.

Everything about him felt dry, gritty, like the sand was now fused to his skin so profusely that he'd never be fully rid of it, cemented like a lacquered coating over his flesh as it coagulated with the heavy beads of sweat that he could feel dampening his entire body beneath the many layers of gear he wore. He was heavy, his recent time in the desert sun leaving him feeling worn, wrung out and on the verge of tearing like a piece of saturated paper; too heavy and pulling dangerously against the seams.

The desert digital-checkered camouflage that he wore felt annoyingly familiar, loosely fitted and heavy as he plucked and fidgeted with the coarse material that covered his arms. He could feel the t-shirt that was underneath his jacket sticking to his torso and bunching under his arms when he moved them, much like the boxers that he could feel plastered to his thighs by the sweat he was steeped in.

He couldn't help but wonder why it all seemed so familiar and different all at once, why it felt like it was just yesterday that this had been his whole purpose and his only way out of a life he couldn't stomach anymore, the waiting, the uniformity, the brotherhood… the hunt, so very different from what he did for the F.B.I. now that his civilian job consisted of a different sort of justice. A kinder sort of justice.

Retribution.

Assassination.

_She has never seen a dead body. He was in the army and has seen too many._

Booth swallowed hard and wondered what it meant that, even inside her fiction, he just couldn't escape being the kind of man that he seemed fated to be no matter how many times he tried to step back to what he thought was a new beginning. Maybe there wasn't really such a thing as a fresh start; maybe it was still just circling the drain after all, taking breaths whenever you chanced to break through above the surf.

Maybe there was no way to change the end, to change anything.

Maybe it was done.

_Okay, then, let's go for a different outcome here…_

He also wondered then if he was angry, and if he had the right to be, that even in fantasy she couldn't have spared him that much, that she had given herself a different past, a different present while she had left him stuck in the same violent rut that apparently would never really smooth.

Apparently, even in her eyes, he'd always be that same hard man, capable of violence.

It was a struggle to tell himself that it didn't really matter, and even after hours of silent argument and self-convincing, he still wasn't sure what he believed.

_Are we having doubts?_

He rolled his head forward and pulled at the bunching muscles in his shoulders.

_Not about anything important._

It all suddenly reminded him that he was no longer the young man that he used to be… in more ways than one.

He frowned.

Shook his head.

Why was he here? What the hell was it that they thought he had to offer?

His impatient frustration stemmed mostly from the fact that the last few weeks had passed so quickly that he was hard pressed to remember every little detail, even things like where all he'd been as they had filtered in and out of countries, slipping on and off bases and in and out of cities as they had been prepped and pushed and briefed and trained back into a whirlwind of military duty. Four of the men, like Booth, had been discharged servicemen who had been out of the military for years and, for whatever reason, had been brought in under specific recommendation from a source that had never been disclosed, though none of that really mattered, he supposed.

He was there. No amount of explanations would make that fact any different.

And he was there for a reason, even if that reason of why him in particular still remained a mystery. He was there for a reason, and whether it was because of his specialties or his service record or just having known the right, or maybe wrong, person at some point in his career.

There was something from him they needed from him, he figured logically, a specific reason why he'd been sent a letter requesting reenlistment instead of so many other possible candidates, though he imagined it had never really been much of a request so much as it was an order, and instead of using any one of the other men or women still currently serving in the army or any other subsequent branch. Not that he suffered the delusions of grandeur it would require to believe that he was unique to the extensiveness of the U.S. military, but something he'd done had singled himself out somewhere along the way.

He wondered if it would prove important that he try to determine exactly what that reason had been.

He wondered if he was capable of living up to the expectation.

Irritable and fighting the emotional gauntlet caused by dehydration, he kicked out one foot and propped his elbow up on his other knee, settling his back against the uncomfortable hub of the driver's side truck wheel. It was hard to choke back the twinge he felt pinching his lower vertebrae, but somehow he managed, his scowl never flinching with the weakness he felt.

_So this is some alpha-male right of passage?_

Without opening his eyes, he cracked his knuckles, struggling to find some sort of relief in that one tiny means of release before he lost his grip on sanity and sent his fist hurtling through the nearest object he could find.

For three days and nights they had been waiting to make contact with their man in the city, waiting for a radio call to come through on the receiver and hoping that the signal was as secured as they had been assured it was; unable to safely arrange the extraction until that contact was made.

In a country where they weren't legally allowed to be, where no official clearance had been given, and where the ramifications of discovery would be felt on a global political and diplomatic level, they couldn't afford to fly blind, couldn't go barreling in to do what was needed.

There was no margin for error.

So for three days and nights they'd been stuck and unable to move away from the low rising, rocky cliff face of the small, wind-cut gully where they'd sought cover from the desert, the only viable source of shade or protection for miles in any direction and about as close to the concentrated population of Tripoli as they dared to get without making arrangements through the proper channels. There was too much risk in proximity, too much chance of getting too close that would unnecessarily close off the path of retreat and opened up the likelihood of being accidentally stumbled upon in a place where there weren't nearly enough places to hide.

There was nothing left to do but wait. They had readied themselves as much as possible, none liking of the passivity of their situation but unable to do anything else.

All things considered, it had been a very long few days.

They were miles away in every direction from what even passed as the most remote parts of civilization, huddled under the sparse shade of a quickly pitched and camouflaged tarp that would, with any luck, blend them into the surroundings enough to keep both them and their vehicle off of any happenstance aerial radar.

So there they waited, six men… six soldiers, all of them armed, trained and impatiently readied beneath an expanse of beige leafed netting and battling the elements like a boiling appetizer, as if fate had not deemed their mission challenging enough and wanted to spice things up a bit.

It was late morning, maybe noon, that rich and robust amber sphere firing the naked blue sky to life with blazing intensity and reminding Booth of yet another day tucked under his belt as he cracked a tentative eye in its direction, squinting as it pierced his delicate retina, vicious even beneath the camo netting. Light speared blindingly through, speckling his face with direct beams of heat, the mesh leaves of the net resting still in the breezeless air.

"Hey… Master Sergeant… you awake over there?"

Something nudged his foot.

_Come on, Booth. Come on! Booth… Booth…_

Booth mumbled a couple of words back, a garbled response that neither man understood. He wasn't even really sure of what he'd been attempting to say, his mouth apparently on autopilot. But his head lolled obediently over his shoulder, automatically swinging in the direction of his addressor as his brain recognized and acknowledged his rank in spite of the fact that he wasn't fully awake yet, hovering somewhere exhaustedly in between.

The blur was still frustratingly thick inside his head, that soft, sleepy confusion still prominent, his vision still clouded by more than just the sudden burst of sunlight that had ripped his burning pupils wide and seared all the way down to the base of his skull at that first cavalier opening.

God, how had he forgotten just how exhausting all of this waiting could be?

Surely that was a fun little factoid that should have stuck out in his head a little more.

He hadn't been sleeping. Or at least, not really anyway… he didn't think… maybe... Though he had been teetering just on the brink, trapped in that space where deep thought pulls down with the same weight as exhaustion, ready to embrace that feeling of heavy, weighted falling that always made him think strangely of being tethered to an anchor and dropped into the ocean. But he never lost awareness, immediately ready to snap back into focus if the need arose, a man on-watch never truly giving in to a deep sleep.

But his body was out of practice. Badly.

Instead of feeling vitalized from his tentative power nap, his body felt sick, nausea and a blinding stab in his temples the first sensation he noticed before he swallowed both of them back down.

"Booth," he gruffed again, louder that time.

"What?"

"The name is Booth. I think we can drop the 'master sergeant' bit since we're in the middle of the goddamn desert, don't you?" His voice sounded deep and grating, unfamiliar even to himself as he clawed his way back to full consciousness.

"Right then. Booth it is. So… uhhh… you awake there, Master Sergeant?"

He felt a chuckle rumble from deep in his chest, mostly humorless but surprisingly soul-easing just the same even though the greater part of him was dreading the conversation clearly coming at him. He really wasn't in the mood to talk, didn't feel like bonding over bland jokes or girls back home or old haunts or whatever else passed for solidarity these days, even if it was with an old friend.

Or maybe that's what made it harder. He didn't know.

But then, the alternative was his own inner monologue, and he definitely didn't feel like listening to _that_ guy any time soon.

It was his fucking fault that he was stuck here in the first place.

"Something on your mind, Chief?" he asked, his eyes narrow as he opened them both carefully to see the man perched against the truck a few feet down from him.

The other man was squatted down, heels raised and ready to jump as he rubbed the back of his neck with a dusty hand, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet as he attempted to stretch out stiff muscles.

The man shrugged. "Nah, not really. Just can't stand the silence anymore, that's all, ya know?" he sniffed. "That's what's wrong with the desert. No birds, no nothing. Just silence."

Booth grunted noncommittally, realizing that he wasn't the only one whose anxieties were deafening the vastness of the wide-open desert to an odd, muffled silence. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who didn't want too much time to think of about what exactly they were doing out there in the Devil's Playpen, as he'd heard one guy refer to it.

"I know what you mean," he admitted, groaning softly at the tightness in his back.

"You okay over there, Sir? Age creeping up on ya?"

With a soft grunt, he rolled his shoulders against the rutted metal wall behind him, subconsciously increasing his already broad mass with a slight puff of his chest. He was still young, right? He was still virile… still _the man_.

Yep. He was just a bit more experienced now, that's all.

Fuck.

"Fuck you, Chief," he grumbled, bristling when he heard the other man chuckle deeply.

Intellectually… rationally, he huffed, he knew that it would take more time for his body to adjust to the harsh environment around him because despite his rigorous and continuous dedication to his fitness, the ease of civilian living had softened him. It softened everyone. From the moment he had donned a suit instead of a uniform, it had been unpreventable.

That was something that the wisdom of age allowed him to admit to silently, though it still piqued his masculine pride to do so.

He knew that years of being coddled by the temperate D.C. weather and dinners of burgers with fries and lazy Sundays watching baseball, and all as much as time simply ticking away, had sanded over some of those rougher edges that had splintered during his first foray into war. But even though his soul was sensitive and empathic and _experienced_ and jaded enough to have a very real appreciation for the hardships life could present, he had grown to take many of his own simple pleasures for granted.

Years away from the desert had allowed him to forget the real definition of heat… of swelter… of ache_._ Briefly, he wondered what else he was going to have to relearn and if he'd have enough time to do so before it all just hit the fan.

Not for the first time, he wondered just what the hell he'd gotten himself into.

Worse than that, though, was that tickling sensation that suggested he knew _exactly_ what…

Booth shifted again, pulling his shoulders in close together for a gratifying crack. He sighed with relief.

"Damn it, Chief," he muttered. "You're _still_ an asshole, you know that? Can't believe they dragged your sorry ass out of retirement."

Chief, or rather, forty-odd-something retired Warfare Operations Specialist, Chief Petty Officer Arthur Rugles, laughed and shook his head as he pulled out a handkerchief from his breast pocket to dab away the beads of sweat that were threatening to roll into his eyes.

He was a larger, middle-aged guy, solid and barrel-chested with thick limbs and, Booth knew from experience, an even thicker skull in every possible meaning, which was mostly bald except for thin layer of silvered buzz-cut fuzz. When he was standing, he towered over Booth by a good three inches, his large stature having often proved to be just as effective as it could be inhibiting, though he was always a good ally to have in any bar fight.

Then again, SEALs usually were.

That was another little fact that Booth knew from experience.

_Are Rangers afraid of SEALs?_

_What? No! Come on, Bones. Rangers aren't afraid of anything, okay? … But SEALs are good though…_

In spite of himself, Booth smiled a little at the memory.

"Besides, you're older than me, geezer," Booth grumbled, wondering when exactly he'd become old enough to be elected ringleader of anything, especially this particular ragtag team.

"And stop calling me 'sir.'"

"What was that over there, sonny boy?"

"Nothing," Booth said, then a little louder added, "Fuckin' Squid. Don't you have a puddle to go play in?"

The other man laughed harder this time and settled back against the side of the truck, dropping his backside to the ground with a grunt and nothing that could pass for grace as he let his legs sprawl out in front of him.

"Hey," the guy shrugged, "I'm just babysitting you toddlers here. That's a full time job in itself. Hell, I should get hazard pay just for that."

Booth just grunted and let his head drop back against the truck, and, even though he didn't really feel like it, smiled to himself as he closed his eyes again.

"So what are you doing back here, kid? Last time I saw you, you were dead sure that your army days were over and you were headed for a comfortable civie life. Get blackmailed by a five-star or something?"

_I can't change. I don't know how…_

He chuckled sadly. Oh, sweet irony, he thought. "Something like that."

Rugles snorted. "Fine. Be a cryptic jackass. Don't catch up with an old friend," he grouched, pretending to be offended.

Old friends they certainly were, having been introduced early in Booth's military career shortly after his brother had enlisted with the navy. Occasional path-crossings had quickly developed a fast friendship between Booth and his brother's commanding officer despite the competitive nature of their separate branches of service.

Having been stationed at nearby bases, they'd frequently ended up running into each other at local watering holes whenever they ventured off base, something that eventually became a typical weekend habit for the two men, always looking for a moderately wild good time as young men often did.

It was a drunken brawl in a backwater civilian bar parking lot that had cemented the two men in each other's lives, both of them impressed with the other's ability to dish it back despite being painfully outnumbered and the tolerance for taking one hell of an ass whipping with no real complaint after the fact. That night they had sat in the holding cell of the local sheriff station for 24 hours waiting on their respective C.O.'s to arrive and ream them a new one, drunkenly laughing about "pretty boy" Booth's broken nose and the rattail that the even-then balding Rugles had torn off of a particular bullish civie after insisting to the drunken man that his barber had missed a spot.

Neither had really minded being punished for what they both had deemed one hell of a good time. Some things are just worth the verbal spankings and busted knuckles, they had both agreed.

They had lost touch for the most part as Booth neared the end of his second tour of duty, his combat engagements in the Middle East and subsequent stint as a POW having put a heavy toll on his mind as he withdrew and settled into a more stable life after moving to D.C., where he also began the downward spiral of a gambling addiction. Eventually it was rehab that kept him busy and having to adjust to becoming a weekend father as he started to climb the ladder within the F.B.I.

He'd wanted to keep in touch, had never meant to brush off contact with a good friend, but as always happens when life gets busy, some areas suffer as priorities are forced to shift and re-shift. Rugles apparently, had remained a serviceman, earning rank in a combat-heavy navy career in between earning red marks on his record, something that didn't surprise Booth in the slightest given his knowledge of the Chief's complete disregard for bureaucracy and absolute intolerance for patience and stupidity.

"Volunteered for a stint in Columbia a few years back," the older man offered after a few minutes, his voice uncharacteristically serious, though Booth suspected it was mostly just to fill the ever-stretching silence.

Booth let an eye crack open slightly. "Yeah?"

"It was hot there too," Rugles said, staring off into space. "Not hot like it is here. Thicker… all that humidity made the air feel like you were walkin' through molasses or something. Never felt anythin' like it.

"It was wetter than I ever thought Hell'd be." And then he added with a throaty chuckle, "…wetter than a slut on a submarine…"

"Hmmm," Booth laughed softly, ever amused with his friend's flaring gift for storytelling.

"Yup," the other man said decisively. "We were there for a few months, huntin' down the drug runners and burning down the fields and factories that we happened to find. The higher-ups wanted to keep it quiet so we didn't have any of the flyboys helpin' us spot. Tryin' to keep politics out of the mix, you know how those pencil-pushers are.

"So instead, there we were, just trudging through that goddamn jungle looking for shit and then burnin' it to the ground as we found it. Not the easiest thing to keep under wraps, you know? Especially when those coke lords got deep pockets and everything they ain't willing to lose."

Booth gave a small nod, thinking that he was starting to see how the pieces fall into place. Rugles talked a lot. But, Booth had to give him credit; there was usually a point.

"What are you trying to tell me, Chief? Think this is gonna blow up in our faces?"

Rugles shook his head then and smiled. "Me? Nah… I'm the optimistic old fuck in this group, remember?"

He couldn't help himself. Booth laughed.

"You're right about the 'old fuck' part," he jabbed.

"Uh huh, and I was just thinkin'… cocaine don't scream when you burn it to the ground."

Booth nodded slowly. "Nope," he drawled. "That it doesn't."

"It snaps, crackles and pops like a son of a bitch, though," Rugles snorted. "Hell of a noise, that. Nothing like it in all the world."

There was another long silence, and then, "Booth. You know these fucks ain't got anything to lose, right? I mean… they're fuckin' crazy."

_It was so real… Who are you?_

Booth nodded again, his dark eyes glazing over as he stepped a little further back inside his head.

"Yup."

For some reason, Booth was assaulted by memories of his second ever mission in hostile territory, a relatively short period in the Congo almost two full decades earlier, back before he'd trained as a sniper, back when he was little better than a body with a gun, meant to either take a bullet or take a life with minimal training and even less discretion.

He'd taken his first bullet there; a shot to the thigh that had just missed the femoral artery but had gotten even with a nasty infection that had taken weeks to recover from. He remembered that wound the clearest out of all of them, remembered the burn of the entry and the head-spinning nauseous pain that followed as a young field medic had dug the metal out of his flesh with the flat edge of a gin-doused Swiss army knife. None of the other incidents, of which there were a decent number more, seemed to warrant the same amount of detail in memory.

But then again, it was probably true what they said: the first time is always special.

"Do you?"

"What?"

He shook his head slightly.

"Do you? Have anything to lose, I mean?" Rugles asked curiously.

_I don't have you're kind of open heart._

Something sad and tender and precious welled inside his chest suddenly, pushing and clawing, bubbling and twisting and threatening to engulf him though he felt the need to guard it jealously, and he had to struggle to swallow the emotion that pushed at the back of his throat.

Too raw to be ignore.

Too fresh to be pushed aside.

Then the corner of his lip twisted up slightly suddenly, his eyes glistening with just the tiniest surge of un-spilled moisture as his heart pushed all the way up to the brim.

"I got a boy. Parker. He's nine now and he's great… he's just… he's great," he managed to get out before he pressed his lips together firmly to hold back anything else that might slip out.

Rugles nodded thoughtfully. "That's good. That's real good. Never did make it there myself. Fatherhood never really seemed to swing my way, what with the job and all, ya know? Never seemed to be the right time.

"That… and I couldn't get a woman to stay around long enough to knock her up… or at least none of them came back sniffin' for child support," he added with an incredulous huff.

Booth's head snapped up and they stared at each other for a brief second before a rip of bursting, hysterical laughter erupted from him uncontrollably, and Booth actually gripped his side to stop it from splitting, his eyes watering while Rugles let his head thump against the side of the truck and pretended to pout.

"I don't know what you think is so goddamn funny," he said, somehow keeping a straight face.

And to be honest, Booth didn't know either. It wasn't really that funny. But sometimes it was either laugh or swallow the barrel end when it all became too much too fast, so for once he didn't question it and allowed himself to spill over the edge of sanity for just a moment and not care why.

"It's a hard life when women only want to use me for this sweet body of mine… seriously it hurts my feelings… I cry about it every night when I have no one to spoon with," Rugles complained in his most pitiful voice.

Booth waved his hands in surrender, humorous tears beginning to creep down his cheeks. It was so easy to slip from one strong emotion to another, so easy to release those unshed tears and call it mirth, that rising unrelenting surge attacking whatever cracks could be found inside him, finally forcing its way out before something could rupture.

"Okay, okay… I'm sorry… Okay… Okay," he struggled to breathe against his laughter.

"Jeez man, that's heavy stuff right there," Booth said, his face sobering. "Although… maybe you should go climb in with Mallard in the back of the truck there. See if he'll give you a cuddle," he said, jerking his thumb behind him toward the covered bed.

"He's been eyeing you since we left the base, big guy. It'd probably make his day." He grinned.

Rugles looked at him seriously. "Yeah," he nodded. "It probably would."

Neither man won the showdown, each one cracking up almost immediately as Rugles finally lost his ability to hold a straight face. Instead he flopped down onto his back with his knees still bent, holding the heels of his hands to his forehead as he laughed and rolled on the ground with childish delight, making the moment almost surreal given everything else going on around them.

After several minutes, Booth sighed as he attempted to catch his breath, grabbing for the bottle of water sitting next to him to ease the sudden dryness he felt coating his tongue.

Rugles, for his part, had stilled but was still chuckling softly, letting his knees rock back and forth while he stared skyward.

"So tell me about your wife," he said casually.

Booth huffed out a laugh. "What makes you think I have one?"

"You got a kid."

"So?"

"I figured for sure an old-time guy like you would've married the poor girl once you knocked her up. You always were gung-ho on that kinda family stuff," Rugles shrugged.

Booth shook his head, relieved that that old wound was one that no longer bothered him.

"Nah, didn't work out that way. I offered, but… none of that really matters, I guess. I mean, Parker's happy and healthy. We make it work so that's all I care about."

Rugles shook his head disbelievingly. "Really? No wife? Girlfriend? Come on, I can't believe a pretty boy like you ain't even nailed down a girlfriend by now. Or two, or three, or, hell, maybe even a harem. Girls always did like you. Never understood it myself, I always thought you had an ugly mug an' all, but what do I know?" he sniffed good-naturedly.

_Would you feel better if I told you I loved you?_

Booth shrugged.

"Seriously? No good stories to share?" Rugles pushed. "Not a single lady love?"

Booth started to respond and then snapped his jaw shut quickly, his pulse suddenly jumping in time with the prickle at the back of his neck.

Something was wrong.

He turned his head toward the ridge on the other side of him, his black eyes darting across the rocky incline, his body immediately drunk with a flush of adrenaline that tasted of apprehension and anticipation, and a hot, bittersweet tang against his tongue. His whole body vibrated like a hair trigger, the itch between his shoulders making his hands shake ever so slightly with the need for appeasement.

_Kind, reassuring brown eyes…_

His breath held, caught by more than dryness in the back of his throat.

Rugles was already on his feet when he risked a glance backwards, the large man shuffling quietly and quickly despite his bulk towards the backend of the pickup to wake the others while Booth slipped beneath the netting, his fist tightly gripping the stock of his rifle as he tucked it against his shoulder.

His fingertips tingled.

_Capable of great violence._

The ridge was low, sloping down with a gradual curvature that served as a good guard against being seen, and Booth peaked over it carefully, crawling with his belly close to the ground, scanning the rocky, reddish brown terrain for the truck brakes that he knew he'd heard.

And then there it was, blatant and unnerving in its carelessness with a couple Libyan soldiers making their way steadily but unknowingly toward the Americans and their concealed vehicle.

* * *

Ok guys, let me know what you think and if you want me to continue... I've got the rest of the story planned so tell me if you want it. Thanks for reading!


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